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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/20647-8.txt b/20647-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..739b413 --- /dev/null +++ b/20647-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9482 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, +September, 1862, by Various + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 + Devoted to Literature and National Policy. + +Author: Various + +Release Date: February 22, 2007 [EBook #20647] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY *** + + + + +Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Janet Blenkinship and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net +(This file was produced from images generously made +available by Cornell University Digital Collections) + + + + + + + + + + + +THE + +CONTINENTAL MONTHLY: + +DEVOTED TO + +LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY + + +VOL. II.--SEPTEMBER, 1862.--NO. III. + + + * * * * * + + + + +HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE. + + +The death of Henry Thomas Buckle, at this period of his career, is no +ordinary calamity to the literary and philosophical world. Others have +been cut short in the midst of a great work, but their books being +narrative merely, may close at almost any period, and be complete; or +others after them may take up the pen and conclude that which was so +abruptly terminated. So it was with Macaulay; he was fascinating, and +his productions were literally devoured by readers of elevated taste, +though they disagreed almost entirely with his conclusions. His volumes +were read--as one reads Dickens, or Holmes, or De Quincey--to amuse in +leisure hours. + +But such are not the motives with which we take up the ponderous tomes +of the historian of Civilization in England. He had no heroes to +immortalize by extravagant eulogy, no prejudices seeking vent to cover +the name of any man with infamy. He knew no William to convert into a +demi-god; no Marlborough who was the embodiment of all human vices. His +mind, discarding the ordinary prejudices of the historian, took a wider +range, and his researches were not into the transactions of a particular +monarch or minister, as such, but into the _laws_ of human action, and +their results upon the civilization of the race. Hence, while he wrote +history, he plunged into all the depths of philosophy; and thus it is, +that his work, left unfinished by himself, can never be completed by +another. It is a work which will admit no broken link from its +commencement to its conclusion. + +Mr. Buckle was born in London, in the early part of the year 1824, and +was consequently about thirty-eight years of age at the time of his +death. His father was a wealthy gentleman of the metropolis, and +thoroughly educated, and the historian was an only son. Devoted to +literature himself, it is not surprising that the parent spared neither +money nor labor to educate his child. He did not, however, follow the +usual course; did not hamper the youthful mind by the narrow routine of +the English academy, nor did he make him a Master of Arts at Oxford or +Cambridge. + +His early education was superintended by his father directly, but +afterward private teachers were employed. But Mr. Buckle was by nature a +close student, and much that he possessed he acquired without a tutor, +as his energetic, self-reliant nature rendered him incapable of ever +seeing insurmountable difficulties before him. By this means he became +what the students of Oxford rarely are, both learned and liberal. As he +mingled freely with the people, during his youth, a democratic sympathy +entwined itself with his education, and is manifested in every page of +his writings. + +Mr. Buckle never married. After he had commenced his great work, he +found no time to enjoy society, no hours of leisure and repose. His +whole soul was engaged in the accomplishment of one great purpose, and +nothing which failed to contribute directly to the object nearest his +heart, received a moment's consideration. He collected around him a +library of twenty-two thousand volumes, all choice standard works, in +Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and English, with all of +which languages he was familiar. It was the best private collection of +books, said some one, in England. It was from this that the historian +drew that inexhaustible array of facts, and procured the countless +illustrations, with which the two volumes of his History of Civilization +abound. + +At what age he first conceived the project of writing his history, is +not yet publicly known. He never figured in the literary world previous +to the publication of his first volume. He appears to have early grasped +at more than a mere temporary fame, and determined to stake all upon a +single production. His reading was always systematic, and exceedingly +thorough; and as he early became charmed with the apparent harmony of +all nature, whether in the physical, intellectual, or moral world, he at +once commenced tracing out the laws of the universe, to which, in his +mind, all things were subject, with a view of illustrating that +beautiful harmony, every where prevailing, every where unbroken. All +this influenced every thing, 'and mind and gross matter, each performed +their parts, in relative proportions, and according to the immutable +laws of progress.' + +With a view of discussing his subject thoroughly, and establishing his +theory beyond controversy, as he believed, he proposed, before referring +to the _History of Civilization in England_, to discover, so far as +possible, all the laws of political and social economy, and establish +the relative powers and influence of the moral faculties, the intellect, +and external nature, and determine the part each takes in contributing +to the progress of the world. To this, the first volume is exclusively +devoted; and it is truly astonishing to observe the amount of research +displayed. The author is perfectly familiar, not only with a vast array +of facts of history, but with the principal discoveries of every branch +of science; and as he regards all things as a unit, he sets out by +saying that no man is competent to write history who is not familiar +with the physical universe. A fascinating writer, with a fair industry, +can write narrative, but not history. + +This is taking in a wide field; and Mr. Buckle may be regarded as +somewhat egotistic and vain; but the fact that he proves himself, in a +great degree, the possessor of the knowledge he conceives requisite, +rather than asserts it, is a sufficient vindication against all +aspersions. + +Mr. Buckle regards physical influences as the primary motive power which +produces civilization; but these influences are fixed in their nature, +and are few in number, and always operate with equal power. The capacity +of the intellect is unlimited; it grows and expands, partially impelled +by surrounding physical circumstances, and partially by its own second +suggestions, growing out of those primary impressions received from +nature. The moral influence, the historian asserts, is the weakest of +the three, which control the destiny of man. Not an axiom now current, +but was known and taught in the days of Plato, of Zoroaster, and of +Confucius; yet how wide the gap intervening between the civilization of +the different eras! Moral without intellectual culture, is nothing; but +with the latter, the former comes as a necessary sequence. + +All individual examples are rejected. As all things act in harmony, we +can only draw deductions by regarding the race in the aggregate, and +studying its progress through long periods of time. Statistics is the +basis of all generalizations, and it is only from a close comparison of +these, for ages, that the harmonious movement of all things can be +clearly proved. + +Mr. Buckle was a fatalist in every sense of the word. Marriages, deaths, +births, crime--all are regulated by Law. The moral status of a community +is illustrated by the number of depredations committed, and their +character. Following the suggestions of M. Quetelot, he brings forward +an array of figures to prove that not only, in a large community, is +there about the same number of crimes committed each year, but their +character is similar, and even the instruments employed in committing +them are nearly the same. Of course, outside circumstances modify this +slightly--such as financial failures, scarcity of bread, etc., but by a +comparison of long periods of time, these influences recur with perfect +regularity. + +It is not the individual, in any instance, who is the criminal--but +society. The murderer and the suicide are not responsible, but are +merely public executioners. Through them the depravity of the _public_ +finds vent. + +Free Will and Predestination--the two dogmas which have, more than any +others, agitated the public mind--are discussed at length. Of course he +accepts the latter theory, but under a different name. Free Will, he +contends, inevitably leads to aristocracy, and Predestination to +democracy; and the British and Scottish churches are cited as examples +of the effect of the two doctrines on ecclesiastical organizations. The +former is an aristocracy, the latter a democracy. + +No feature of Mr. Buckle's work is so prominent as its democratic +tendencies. The people, and the means by which they can be elevated, +were uppermost in his mind, and he disposes of established usages, and +aristocratic institutions, in a manner far more American than English. +It is this circumstance which has endeared him to the people of this +country, and to the liberals of Germany--the work having been translated +into German. For the same reason, he was severely criticised in England. + +Having devoted the first volume to a discussion of the laws of +civilization, it was his intention to publish two additional volumes, +illustrating them; taking the three countries in which were found +certain prominent characteristics, which he conceived could be fully +accounted for by his theories, but by no other, and above all, by none +founded upon the doctrine of free will and individual responsibility. +These countries were Spain, Scotland, and the United States--nations +which grew up under the most diverse physical influences, and which +present widely different civilizations. + +The volume treating upon Spain and Scotland has been published about a +year; and great was the indignation it created in the latter country. In +Spain it is probable that the work is unknown; but it was caught up by +the Scottish reviewers, who are shocked at any thing outside of regular +routine, and whose only employment seems to be to strangle young +authors. _Blackwood_, and the _Edinburgh Review_, contained article +after article against the 'accuser' of Scotland; but the writers, +instead of calmly sifting and disproving Mr. Buckle's untenable +theories, new into a rage, and only established two things, to the +intelligent public--their own malice and ignorance. + +Amid all this abuse, our author stood immutable. But once did he ever +condescend to notice his maligners, and then only to expose their +ignorance, at the same time pledging himself never again to refer to +their attacks. A thinking man, he could not but be fully aware that +their style, and self-evident malice, could only add to his reputation. + +As already remarked, he did not write to immortalize a hero, but to +establish an idea; did not labor to please the fancy, but to reach the +understanding; hence we read his books, not as we do the brilliant +productions of Macaulay, the smooth narratives of Prescott, or the +dramatic pages of Bancroft; but his thoughts are so well connected, and +so systematically arranged, that to read a single page, is to insure a +close study of the whole volume. We would not study him for his style, +for although fair, it is not pleasing; we can not glide over his pages +in thoughtless ease; but then, at the close of almost every paragraph, +one must pause and _think_. + +Being an original writer, Mr. Buckle naturally fell into numerous +errors; but now is not the proper time to refute them. He gives more +than due weight to the powers of nature, in the civilization of man; and +although he probably intimates the fact, yet he does _not_ add that as +the intellect is enlightened, their influences become circumscribed, and +must gradually almost entirely disappear. In the primitive state of the +race, climate, soil, food, and scenery, are all-powerful; but among an +enlightened people, the effects of heat and cold, of barren or +exceedingly productive soils, etc., are entirely modified. This omission +has given his enemies an excellent opportunity for a display of their +refutory powers, of which they have not failed to avail themselves. + +The historian is a theorist, yet no controversialist. He states his +facts, and draws his conclusions, as if no ideas different from his own +had ever been promulgated. He never attempts to show the fallacies of +any other author, but readily understands that if he establishes his +system of philosophy, all contrary ones must fall. How fortunate it +would have been for the human race, if all innovators and reformers had +done the same! + +That which adds to the regrets occasioned by his loss, which must be +entertained by every American, is the circumstance that his forthcoming +volume was to be devoted to the social and political condition of the +United States, as an example of a country in which existed a general +diffusion of knowledge. Knowing, as all his readers do, that his +sympathies are democratic, and in favor of the elevation of the masses, +we had a right to expect a vindication-the first we ever had--from an +English source. At the time of his death he was traveling through Europe +and Asia for his health, intending to arrive in this country in autumn, +to procure facts as a basis for his third volume, and the last of his +introduction. + +Although his work is an unfinished one, it will remain a lasting +monument to the industry of its author. He has done enough to exhibit +the necessity of studying and writing history, henceforth as a +_science_; and of replacing the chaotic fragments of narrative, called +history, with which the world abounds, by a systematic statement of +facts, and philosophical deductions. Some other author, with sufficient +energy and industry, will--not finish the work of Mr. Buckle, but--write +another in which the faults of the original will be corrected, and the +omissions filled; who will go farther in defining the relative +influences of the three powers which control civilization, during the +different stages of human progress. + + + + +AN ANGEL ON EARTH. + + Die when you may, you will not wear + At heaven's court a form more fair + Than beauty at your birth has given; + Keep but the lips, the eyes we see, + The voice we hear, and you will be + An angel ready-made for heaven. + + + + +THE MOLLY O'MOLLY PAPERS. + +VIII + + +Better than wealth, better than hosts of friends, better than genius, is +a mind that finds enjoyment in little things--that sucks honey from the +blossom of the weed as well as from the rose--that is not too dainty to +enjoy coarse, everyday fare. I am thankful that, though not born under a +lucky star, I wasn't born under a melancholy one; that, though there +were at my christening no kind fairies to bestow on me all the blessings +of life--there was no malignant elf to 'mingle a curse with every +blessing.' I'd rather have a few drops of pure sweet than an overflowing +cup tinctured with bitterness. + +Not that sorrow has never blown her chill breath on my spirit--yet it +has never been so iced over that it would not here and there bubble +forth with a song of gladness.... There are depths of woe that I have +never fathomed, or rather, to which I have never sunken--for there are +no line and plummet to sound the dreary depths--yet the waves have +overwhelmed me, as every human being, but I soon rose above them. + + 'One by one thy griefs shall meet thee, + Do not fear an armed band; + One shall fade as others greet thee-- + Shadows passing through the land.' + +I have found this true--I know there are some to whom it is not +true--that, though sorrows come not to them 'in battalions,' the shadow +of the one huge Grief is ever on their path, or on their heart; that at +their down-sittings and their up-risings it is with them, even darkening +to them the night, and making them almost curse the sunshine; for it is +ever between them and it--not a mere shadow, nor yet a substance, but a +_vacuum of light_, casting also a shadow. Neither substance nor shadow, +it must be a phantom--it may be of a dead sin--and against such, +exorcism avails. I opine this exorcism lies in no cabalistic words, no +crossing of the forehead, no holy name, in nothing that one can do unto +or for himself, but in entire self-forgetfulness--in doing for, in +sympathizing with, others. So shall this Grief step aside from your +path, get away from between you and the sunshine, till finally it shall +have vanished. + +I know--not, however, by experience--that a great _sorrow-berg_, with +base planted in the under-current of a man's being, has been borne at a +fearful rate, right up against all his nobly-built hopes and projects, +making a complete wreck of them. May God help him then! But must his +being ever after be like the lonely Polar Sea on which no bark was ever +launched? + +But surely we have troubles enough without borrowing from the future or +the past, as we constantly do. It is often said, it is a good thing that +we can't look into the future. One would think that that mysterious +future, on which we are the next moment to enter, in which we are to +live our everyday life--one would think it a store-house of evils. Do +you expect no good--are there for you no treasures there? + +How often life has been likened to a journey, a pilgrimage, with its +deserts to cross, its mountains to climb!... The road to---- Lake, +distant from my home some eight or ten miles, partly lies through a +mountain pass. You drive a few miles--and a beautiful drive it is, with +its pines and hemlocks, their dark foliage contrasting with the blue +sky--on either hand high mountains; now at your left, then at your +right, and again at your left runs now swiftly over stones, now +lingering in hollows, making good fishing-places, a creek, that has come +many glad miles on its way to the river. But how are you to get over +that mountain just before you? Your horse can't draw you up its rocky, +perpendicular front! Never mind, drive along--there, the mountain is +behind you--the road has wound around it. Thus it is with many a +mountain difficulty in our way, we never have it to climb. There is now +and then one, though, that we do have to climb, and we can't be drawn or +carried up by a faithful nag, but our weary feet must toil up its steep +and rugged side. But many a pilgrim before us has climbed it, and we +will not faint on the way. 'What man has done, man may do.' ... Yet, +till I have found out to a certainty, I never will be sure that the +mountain that seemingly blocks up my way, _has not a path winding round +it_. + +Then the past.... Some one says we are happier our whole life for having +spent one pleasant day. Keats says: 'A thing of beauty is a joy +_forever_.' I believe this: to me the least enjoyment has been like a +grain of musk dropped into my being, sending its odor into all my +after-life--it may be that centuries hence it will not have lost its +fragrance. Who knows? + +But sorrows--they should, like bitter medicines, be washed down with +sweet; we should get the taste of them out of our mouth as soon as +possible. + +We are as apt to borrow trouble from the might-have-beens of our past +life as from any thing else. We mourn over the chances we've missed--the +happiness that eel-like has slipped through our fingers. This is folly; +for generally there are so many ifs in the way, that nearly all the +might-have-beens turn into couldn't-have-beens. Even if they do not, it +is well for us when we don't know them.... The object of our weary +search glides past us like Gabriel past Evangeline, so near, did we only +know it: happy is it for us if we do not, like her, too late learn it; +for + + 'Of all sad words of tongue or pen, + The saddest are these--_it might have been!_' + +So sad are they, that they would be a suitable refrain to the song of a +lost spirit. + +Well, I might have been ----, but am ---- + +MOLLY O'MOLLY. + + +IX. + +If one wishes to know how barren one's life is of events, the best way +is to try to keep a journal. I tried it in my boarding-school days. With +a few exceptions, the record of one day's outer life was sufficient for +the week; the rest might have been written _ditto, ditto_. Even then, +the events were so trifling that, like entries in a ledger, they might +have been classed as _sundries_. How I tried to get up thoughts and +feelings to make out a decent day's chronicle! How I threw in profound +remarks on what I had read, sketches of character, caricatures of the +teachers, even condescending to give the bill of fare; here, too, there +might have been a great many _dittos_. Had I kept a record of my +dream-life, what a variety there would have been! what extravagances, +exceeded by nothing out of the _Arabian Nights' Entertainments_. Then, +if I could have illuminated each day's page with my own fancy portrait +of myself, the _Book of Beauty_ would not have been a circumstance to my +journal. Certainly, among these portraits would not have been that +plain, snub-nosed daguerreotype, sealed and directed to a dear home +friend; but to the dear home friend no picture in the _Book of Beauty_ +or my fancy journal would have had such charms; and if the daguerreotype +would not have illuminated this journal, it was itself illuminated _by +the light of a mother's love_. Alas! this light never more can rest on +and irradiate the plain face of Molly O'Molly. + +After all, what a dull, monotonous life ours would be, if within this +outer life there were not the inner life, the 'wheel within the wheel,' +as in Ezekiel's vision. Though this inner wheel is 'lifted up +whithersoever the spirit' wills 'to go,' the outer--unlike that in the +vision--is not also lifted up; perhaps _hereafter_ it will be. + +The Mohammedans believe that, although unseen by mortals, 'the decreed +events of every man's life are impressed in divine characters on his +forehead.' If so, I shouldn't wonder if there was generally a large +margin of forehead left, unless there is a great deal of repetition.... +The record (not the prophecy) of the inner life, though it is +hieroglyphed on the whole face too, is a scant one; not because there is +but little to record, but because only results are chronicled. Like the +_Veni, vidi, vici_, of Cæsar. _Veni_; nothing of the weary march. +_Vidi_; nothing of the doubts, fears, and anxieties. _Vici_; nothing of +the fierce struggle. + +One thing is certain; though we can not read the divine imprint on the +forehead, we know that either there or on the face, either as prophecy +or record, is written, _grief_. Grief, the burden of the sadly-beautiful +song of the poet; yet we find, alas! that _grief is grief_. And the +poet's woe is also the woe of common mortals, though his soul is so +strung that every breeze that sweeps over it is changed to melody. The +wind that wails, and howls, and shrieks around the corners of streets, +among the leafless branches of trees, through desolate houses, is the +same wind that sweeps the silken strings of the Æolian harp. + +Then there is _care_, most often traced on the face of woman, the care +of responsibility or of work, sometimes of both. A man, however hard he +may labor, if he loses a day, does not always find an accumulation of +work; but with poor, over-worked woman, it is, work or be overwhelmed +with work, as in the punishment of prisoners, it is, pump or drown. I +can not understand how women do get along who, with the family of John +Rogers' wife, assisted only by the eldest daughter, a girl of thirteen, +wash, iron, bake, cook, wash dishes, and sew for the family, coats and +pantaloons included, and that too without the help of a machine. Oh! +that pile of sewing always cut out, to be leveled stitch by stitch; for, +unlike water, it never will find its own level, unless its level be Mont +Blanc, for to such a hight it would reach if left to itself. I could +grow eloquent on the subject, but forbear. + +Croakers to the contrary notwithstanding, there is in the record of our +past lives, or in the prophecy of our future, another word than _grief_ +or _care_; it is _joy_. My friend, could your history be truthfully +written, and printed in the old style, are there not many passages that +would shine beautifully in golden letters? I say truthfully written; for +we are so apt to forget our joys, while we remember our griefs. Perhaps +this is because joy and its effects are so evanescent. Leland talks +beautifully of 'the perfumed depths of the lotus-word, _joyousness_;' +but in this world we only breathe the perfume. Could we eat the +lotus!... The fabled lotus-eater wished never to leave the isle whence +he had plucked it. Wrapped in dreamy selfishness, unnerved for the toil +of reaching the far-off shore, he grew indifferent to country and +friends.... So earth would be to us an enchanted isle. The stern toil by +which we are to reach that better land, our _home_, would become irksome +to us. It is well for us that we can only breathe the perfume. + +Then, too, the deepest woe we may know--not the highest joy--that is +bliss beyond even our capacity of dreaming. Some one, in regard to the +ladder Jacob saw in his dream, says: 'But alas! he slept at the foot.' +That any ladder should be substantial enough for cumbersome mortality to +climb to heaven, was too great an impossibility even for a dream. + +But read for yourself the faces that swirl through the streets of a +city. Now and then there is one on which the results of all evil +passions are traced. Were it not for the _brute_ in it, it might be +mistaken for the face of a fiend. Though such are few, too many bear the +impress of at least one evil passion. Every passion, unbitted and +unbridled, hurries the soul bound to it--as Mazeppa was bound to the +wild horse--to certain destruction.... But I--as all things hasten to +the end--will mention one word more--the _finis_ of the prophecy--the +_stamp on the seal_ of the record--_Death_.... We will not dwell on it. +Who more than glances at the _finis_, who studies the plain word stamped +on the seal? + +Yours, MOLLY O'MOLLY. + + +X. + +I have read of a young Indian girl, disguised as her lover, whom she had +assisted to escape from captivity, fleeing from her pursuers, till she +reached the brink of a deep ravine; before her is a perpendicular wall +of rock; behind, the foe, so near that she can hear the crackling of the +dry branches under their tread; yet nearer they come; she almost feels +their breath on her cheek; it is useless to turn at bay; there is hardly +time to measure with her eye the depth of the ravine, or its width. A +step back, another forward, an almost superhuman leap, and she has +cleared the awful chasm.... 'Look before you leap,' is one of caution's +maxims. We may stand looking till it is too late to leap. There are +times when we _must_ put our 'fate to the touch, to win or lose it all;' +there are times when doubt, hesitation, caution is certain destruction. +You are crossing a frozen pond, firm by the shore, but as you near the +centre, the ice beneath your feet begins to crack; hesitate, attempt to +retrace your steps, and you are gone. Did you ever cross a rapid stream +on an unhewn foot-log? You looked down at the swift current, stopped, +turned back, and over you went. You would climb a steep mountain-side. +Half-way up, look not from the dizzy hight, but press on, grasping every +tough laurel and bare root; but hasten, the laurel may break, and you +lose your footing. 'If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all;' but once +resolved to climb, leave thy caution at the foot. Before you give battle +to the enemy, be cautious, reckon well your chances of winning or +losing; above all, be sure of the justice of your cause; but once flung +into the fierce fight, then with _'Dieu et mon droit!'_ for your +battle-cry, let not 'discretion' be _any_ 'part of' your 'valor.' + +Then your careful, hesitating people are cautious where there is no need +of caution, they feel their way on the highways and by-ways of life, as +you have seen a person when fording a stream with whose bed he was +unacquainted. I'd rather fall down and pick myself up a dozen times a +day, than thus grope my way along. + +There is Nancy Primrose. I have good reason to remember her. She was, in +my childhood, always held up to me as a pattern. She used to come to +school with such smooth, clean pantalets, while mine were splashed with +mud, drabbled by the wet grass, or all wrinkles from having been rolled +up. She would go around a rod to avoid a mud-puddle, or if she availed +herself of the board laid down for the benefit of pedestrians, she +never, as I was sure to do, stepped on one end, so the other came down +with a splash. The starch never was taken out of her sun-bonnet by the +rain, for if there was 'a cloud as big as a man's hand,' she took an +umbrella. It was well that she never climbed the mountain-side, for she +would have surely fallen. It was well that she never crossed a foot-log, +unless it was hewn and had a railing, for she would have certainly been +ducked. It was well she never went on thin ice, (she didn't venture till +the other girls had tried it,) she would have broken through. Her +caution, I must say, was of the right kind; it always preceded her +undertaking. She had such a 'wholesome fear of consequences,' that she +never played truant, as one whom I could mention did. Indeed, +antecedents and consequents were always associated in her mind. She +never risked any thing for herself or any one else.... Of course, she is +still _Miss_ Nancy, (I am 'Aunt Molly' to all my friends' children,) +though it is said that she might have been Mrs.----. Mr.----, a widower +of some six months' standing, thinking it time to commence his +probation--the engagement preparatory to being received into the full +matrimonial connection--made some advances toward Miss Nancy, she being +the nearest one verging on 'an uncertain age,' (you know widowers +always go the rounds of the old maids.) Though, in a worldly point of +view, he was an eligible match, she, from her fixed habits of caution, +half-hesitated as to whether it was best to receive his attentions--he +got in a hurry (you know widowers are always in a hurry) and married +some one else.... I don't think Miss Nancy would venture to love any man +before marriage--engagements are as liable to be broken as thin ice, and +it isn't best to throw away love. As for her giving it unasked!... How +peacefully her life flows along--or rather, it hardly flows at all, +about as much as a mill-pond--with such a small bit of heaven and earth +reflected in it. Oh! that placidity!--better have some great, heavy, +splashing sorrow thrown into it than that ever calm surface.... As for +me--it was a good thing that I was a girl--rash, never counting the +cost, without caution, it is well that I have to tread the quiet paths +of domestic life. Had I been a boy, thrown out into the rough, dangerous +world, I'd have rushed over the first precipice, breaking my moral, or +physical neck, or both. As it is, had I been like Miss Nancy, I would +have been spared many an agony, and--many an exquisite joy. + +You may be sure that I have well learned all of caution's maxims; they +have, all my life, been dinged into my ears. Now I hate most maxims. +Though generally considered epitomes of wisdom, they should, almost all +of them, be received with a qualification. What is true in one case is +not true in another; what is good for one, is not good for another. You, +as far as you are concerned, in exactly the same manner draw two lines, +one on a plane, the other on a sphere; one line will be straight, the +other curved. So does every truth, even, make a different mark on +different minds. This is one reason that I hate most maxims, they never +accommodate themselves to circumstances or individuals. The maxim that +would make one man a careful economist, would make another a miser. 'One +man's meat is another man's poison;' one man's truth is another man's +falsehood. + +But how many mistaken ideas have been embodied in maxims--fossilized, I +may say! It would have been better to let them die the natural death of +falsehood, and they might have sprung up in new forms of truth--truth +that never dies. What a vitality it has--a vitality that can not be +dried out by time, nor crushed out by violence. You know how in old +mummy-cases have been found grains of wheat, which, being sown, sprang +up, and bore a harvest like that which waved in the breeze on the banks +of the Nile. You know how God's truth--all truth is God's truth--was +shut up in that old mummy-case, the monastery, and how, when found by +one Luther, and sown broadcast, it sprang up, and now there is hardly an +island, or a river's bank, on which it has not fallen and does not bear +abundant fruit. The 'heel of despotism' could not crush out its life; +ages hence it will be said of it: 'It still lives.' + +And still lives, yours, + +MOLLY O'MOLLY. + + + + +'THAT LAST DITCH.' + + +Many reasons have been assigned for the _Chivalry's_ determining to die +in that last ditch. One William Shakspeare puts into the mouth of +Enobarbus, in _Antony and Cleopatra_, the best reason we have yet seen. +'Tis thus: + + 'I will go seek + Some ditch wherein to die: THE FOUL BEST FITS + MY LATTER PART OF LIFE.' + + + + +HOPEFUL TACKETT--HIS MARK. + +BY RICHARD WOLCOTT, 'TENTH ILLINOIS.' + + + 'An' the Star-Spangle' Banger in triump' shall wave + O! the lan dov the free-e-e, an' the ho mov the brave.' + +Thus sang Hopeful Tackett, as he sat on his little bench in the little +shop of Herr Kordwäner, the village shoemaker. Thus he sang, not +artistically, but with much fervor and unction, keeping time with his +hammer, as he hammered away at an immense 'stoga.' And as he sang, the +prophetic words rose upon the air, and were wafted, together with an +odor of new leather and paste-pot, out of the window, and fell upon the +ear of a ragged urchin with an armful of hand-bills. + +'Would you lose a leg for it, Hope?' he asked, bringing to bear upon +Hopeful a pair of crossed eyes, a full complement of white teeth, and a +face promiscuously spotted with its kindred dust. + +'For the Banger?' replied Hopeful; 'guess I would. Both on 'em--an' a +head, too.' + +'Well, here's a chance for you.' And he tossed him a hand-bill. + +Hopeful laid aside his hammer and his work, and picked up the hand-bill; +and while he is reading it, let us briefly describe him. Hopeful is not +a beauty, and he knows it; and though some of the rustic wits call him +'Beaut,' he is well aware that they intend it for irony. His countenance +runs too much to nose--rude, amorphous nose at that--to be classic, and +is withal rugged in general outline and pimply in spots. His hair is +decidedly too dingy a red to be called, even by the utmost stretch of +courtesy, auburn; dry, coarse, and pertinaciously obstinate in its +resistance to the civilizing efforts of comb and brush. But there is a +great deal of big bone and muscle in him, and he may yet work out a +noble destiny. Let us see. + +By the time he had spelled out the hand-bill, and found that +Lieutenant ---- was in town and wished to enlist recruits for +Company ----, ---- Regiment, it was nearly sunset; and he took off his +apron, washed his hands, looked at himself in the piece of looking-glass +that stuck in the window--a defiant look, that said that he was not +afraid of all that nose--took his hat down from its peg behind the door, +and in spite of the bristling resistance of his hair, crowded it down +over his head, and started for his supper. And as he walked he mused +aloud, as was his custom, addressing himself in the second person, +'Hopeful, what do you think of it? They want more soldiers, eh? Guess +them fights at Donelson and Pittsburg Lannen 'bout used up some o' them +ridgiments. By Jing!' (Hopeful had been piously brought up, and his +emphatic exclamations took a mild form.) 'Hopeful, 'xpect you'll have to +go an' stan' in some poor feller's shoes. 'Twon't do for them there +blasted Seceshers to be killin' off our boys, an' no one there to pay +'em back. It's time this here thing was busted! Hopeful, you an't +pretty, an' you an't smart; but you used to be a mighty nasty hand with +a shot-gun. Guess you'll have to try your hand on old Borey's +[Beauregard's] chaps; an' if you ever git a bead on one, he'll enter his +land mighty shortly. What do you say to goin'? You wanted to go last +year, but mother was sick, an' you couldn't; and now mother's gone to +glory, why, show your grit an' go. Think about it, any how.' + +And Hopeful did think about it--thought till late at night of the +insulted flag, of the fierce fights and glorious victories, of the dead +and the dying lying out in the pitiless storm, of the dastardly outrages +of rebel fiends--thought of all this, with his great warm heart +overflowing with love for the dear old 'Banger,' and resolved to go. +The next morning, he notified his 'boss' of his intention to quit his +service for that of Uncle Sam. The old fellow only opened his eyes very +wide, grunted, brought out the stocking, (a striped relic of the +departed Frau Kordwäner,) and from it counted out and paid Hopeful every +cent that was due him. But there was one thing that sat heavily upon +Hopeful's mind. He was in a predicament that all of us are liable to +fall into--he was in love, and with Christina, Herr Kordwäner's +daughter. Christina was a plump maiden, with a round, rosy face, an +extensive latitude of shoulders, and a general plentitude and solidity +of figure. All these she had; but what had captivated Hopeful's eye was +her trim ankle, as it had appeared to him one morning, encased in a warm +white yarn stocking of her own knitting. From this small beginning, his +great heart had taken in the whole of her, and now he was desperately in +love. Two or three times he had essayed to tell her of his proposed +departure; but every time that the words were coming to his lips, +something rushed up into his throat ahead of them, and he couldn't +speak. At last, after walking home from church with her on Sunday +evening, he held out his hand and blurted out: + +'Well, good-by. We're off to-morrow.' + +'Off! Where?' + +'I've enlisted.' + +Christina didn't faint. She didn't take out her delicate and daintily +perfumed _mouchoir_, to hide the tears that were not there. She looked +at him for a moment, while two great _real_ tears rolled down her +cheeks, and then--precipitated all her charms right into his arms. +Hopeful stood it manfully--rather liked it, in fact. But this is a +tableau that we've no right to be looking at; so let us pass by how they +parted--with what tears and embraces, and extravagant protestations of +undying affection, and wild promises of eternal remembrance; there is no +need of telling, for we all know how foolish young people will be under +such circumstances. We older heads know all about such little matters, +and what they amount to. Oh! yes, certainly we do. + +The next morning found Hopeful, with a dozen others, in charge of the +lieutenant, and on their way to join the regiment. Hopeful's first +experience of camp-life was not a singular one. He, like the rest of us, +at first exhibited the most energetic awkwardness in drilling. Like the +rest of us, he had occasional attacks of home-sickness; and as he stood +at his post on picket in the silent night-watches, while the camps lay +quietly sleeping in the moonlight, his thoughts would go back to his +far-away home, and the little shop, and the plentiful charms of the +fair-haired Christina. So he went on, dreaming sweet dreams of home, but +ever active and alert, eager to learn and earnest to do his duty, +silencing all selfish suggestions of his heart with the simple logic of +a pure patriotism. + +'Hopeful,' he would say, 'the Banger's took care o' you all your life, +an' now you're here to take care of it. See that you do it the best you +know how.' + +It would be more thrilling and interesting, and would read better, if we +could take our hero to glory amid the roar of cannon and muskets, +through a storm of shot and shell, over a serried line of glistening +bayonets. But strict truth--a matter of which newspaper correspondents, +and sensational writers, generally seem to have a very misty +conception--forbids it. + +It was only a skirmish--a bush-whacking fight for the possession of a +swamp. A few companies were deployed as skirmishers, to drive out the +rebels. + +'Now, boys,' shouted the captain, 'after'em! Shoot to kill, not to scare +'em!' + +'Ping! ping!' rang the rifles. + +'Z-z-z-z-vit!' sang the bullets. + +On they went, crouching among the bushes, creeping along under the banks +of the brook, cautiously peering from behind trees in search of +'butternuts.' + +Hopeful was in the advance; his hat was lost, and his hair more +defiantly bristling than ever. Firmly grasping his rifle, he pushed on, +carefully watching every tree and bush, A rebel sharp-shooter started to +run from one tree to another, when, quick as thought, Hopeful's rifle +was at his shoulder, a puff of blue smoke rose from its mouth, and the +rebel sprang into the air and fell back--dead. Almost at the same +instant, as Hopeful leaned forward to see the effect of his shot, he +felt a sudden shock, a sharp, burning pain, grasped at a bush, reeled, +and sank to the ground. + +'Are you hurt much, Hope?' asked one of his comrades, kneeling beside +him and staunching the blood that flowed from his wounded leg. + +'Yes, I expect I am; but that red wamus over yonder's redder 'n ever +now. That feller won't need a pension.' + +They carried him back to the hospital, and the old surgeon looked at the +wound, shook his head, and briefly made his prognosis. + +'Bone shattered--vessels injured--bad leg--have to come off. Good +constitution, though; he'll stand it.' + +And he did stand it; always cheerful, never complaining, only, +regretting that he must be discharged--that he was no longer able to +serve his country. + +And now Hopeful is again sitting on his little bench in Mynheer +Kordwäner's little shop, pegging away at the coarse boots, singing the +same glorious prophecy that we first heard him singing. He has had but +two troubles since his return. One is the lingering regret and +restlessness that attends a civil life after an experience of the rough, +independent life in camp. The other trouble was when he first saw +Christina after his return. The loving warmth with which she greeted him +pained him; and when the worthy Herr considerately went out of the room, +leaving them alone, he relapsed into gloomy silence. At length, speaking +rapidly, and with choked utterance, he began: + +'Christie, you know I love you now, as I always have, better 'n all the +world. But I'm a cripple now--no account to nobody--just a dead +weight--an' I don't want you, 'cause o' your promise before I went away, +to tie yourself to a load that'll be a drag on you all your life. That +contract--ah--promises--an't--is--is hereby repealed! There!' And he +leaned his head upon his hands and wept bitter tears, wrung by a great +agony from his loving heart. + +Christie gently laid her hand upon his shoulder, and spoke, slowly and +calmly: 'Hopeful, your soul was not in that leg, was it?' + +It would seem as if Hopeful had always thought that such was the case, +and was just receiving new light upon the subject, he started up so +suddenly. + +'By jing! Christie!' And he grasped her hand, and--but that is another +of those scenes that don't concern us at all. And Christie has promised +next Christmas to take the name, as she already has the heart, of +Tackett. Herr Kordwäner, too, has come to the conclusion that he wants a +partner, and on the day of the wedding a new sign is to be put up over a +new and larger shop, on which 'Co.' will mean Hopeful Tackett. In the +mean time, Hopeful hammers away lustily, merrily whistling, and singing +the praises of the 'Banger.' Occasionally, when he is resting, he will +tenderly embrace his stump of a leg, gently patting and stroking it, and +talking to it as to a pet. If a stranger is in the shop, he will hold it +out admiringly, and ask: + +'Do you know what I call that? I call that _'Hopeful Tackett--his +mark.'_' + +And it is a mark--a mark of distinction--a badge of honor, worn by many +a brave fellow who has gone forth, borne and upheld by a love for the +dear old flag, to fight, to suffer, to die if need be, for it; won in +the fierce contest, amid the clashing strokes of the steel and the wild +whistling of bullets; won by unflinching nerve and unyielding muscle; +worn as a badge of the proudest distinction an American can reach. If +these lines come to one of those that have thus fought and +suffered--though his scars were received in some unnoticed, unpublished +skirmish, though official bulletins spoke not of him, 'though fame +shall never know his story'--let them come as a tribute to him; as a +token that he is not forgotten; that those that have been with him +through the trials and the triumphs of the field, remember him and the +heroic courage that won for him by those honorable scars; and that while +life is left to them they will work and fight in the same cause, +cheerfully making the same sacrifices, seeking no higher reward than to +take him by the hand and call him 'comrade,' and to share with him the +proud consciousness of duty done. Shoulder-straps and stars may bring +renown; but he is no less a real hero who, with rifle and bayonet, +throws himself into the breach, and, uninspired by hope of official +notice, battles manfully for the right. + +Hopeful Tackett, humble yet illustrious, a hero for all time, we salute +you. + + + + +JOHN BULL TO JONATHAN. + + + You grow too fast, my child! Your stalwart limbs, + Herculean in might, now rival mine; + The starry light upon your forehead dims + The lustre of my crown--distasteful sign. + Contract thy wishes, boy! Do not insist + Too much on what's thine own--thou art too new! + Bend and curtail thy stature! As I list, + It is _my_ glorious privilege to do. + Take my advice--I freely give it thee-- + Nay, would enforce it. I am ripe in years-- + Let thy young vigor minister to me! + Restrain thy freedom when it interferes! + No rival must among the nations be + To jeopardize my own supremacy! + + + + +JONATHAN TO JOHN BULL. + + + Thanks for your kind advice, my worthy sire! + Though thrust upon me, and but little prized. + The offices you modestly require, + I reckon, will be scarcely realized. + My service to you! but not quite so far + That I will lop a limb, or force my lips + To gratify your longing. Not a star + Of my escutcheon shall your fogs eclipse! + Let noble deeds evince my parentage. + No rival I; my aim is not so low: + In nature's course, youth soon outstrippeth age, + And is survivor at its overthrow. + Freedom is Heaven's best gift. Thanks! I am free, + Nor will acknowledge your supremacy! + + + + +AMERICAN STUDENT LIFE. + +SOME MEMORIES OF YALE. + + + 'Through many an hour of summer suns, + By many pleasant ways, + Like Hezekiah's, backward runs + The shadow of my days. + I kiss the lips I once have kissed; + The gas-light wavers dimmer; + And softly through a vinous mist, + My college friendships glimmer.' + + --_Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue._ + +It is now I dare not say how many years since the night that chum and I, +emerging from No. 24, South College, descended the well-worn staircase, +and took our last stroll beneath the heavy shadows that darkly hung from +the old elms of our Alma Mater. Commencement, with its dazzling +excitement, its galleries of fair faces to smile and approve, its +gathered wisdom to listen and adjudge, was no longer the goal of our +student-hopes; and the terrible realization that our joyous college-days +were over, now pressed hard upon us as we paced slowly along, listening +to the low night wind among the summer leaves overhead, or looking up at +the darkened windows whence the laugh and song of class-mates had so oft +resounded to vex with mirth the drowsy ear of night--and tutors. I +thought then, as I have often thought since, that our student-life must +be 'the golden prime' compared with which all coming time would be as +silver, brass, or iron. Here youth with its keenness of enjoyment and +generous heartiness; freedom from care, smooth-browed and mirthful; +liberal studies refining and elevating withal; the Numbers, whose ready +sympathy had divided sorrow and multiplied joy, were associated as they +never could be again; and so I doubt not many a one has felt as he stood +at the door of academic life and looked away over its sunny meadows to +the dark woodlands and rugged hillsides of world-life. How throbbed in +old days the wandering student's heart as on the distant hill-top he +turned to take a last look at disappearing Bologna and remembered the +fair curtain-lecturing Novella de Andrea[1]--fair prototype of modern +Mrs. Caudle; how his spirits rose when, like Lucentio, he came to 'fair +Padua, nursery of arts;' or how he mused for the last time wandering +beside the turbid Arno, in + + 'Pisa, renowned for grave citizens,' + +we wot not. Little do we know either of the ancient 'larks' of the +Sorbonne, of Leyden, Utrecht, and Amsterdam; somewhat less, in spite of +gifted imagining, of _The Student of Salamanca_. But Howitt's _Student +Life in Germany_, setting forth in all its noisy, smoking, beer-drinking +conviviality the significance of the Burschenleben, + + 'I am an unmarried scholar and a free man;' + +Bristed's _Five Years in an English University_, congenial in its +setting forth of the Cantab's carnal delights and intellectual +jockeyism; _The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, an Oxford Freshman_, +wherein one 'Cuthbert Bede, B.A.' has by 'numerous illustrations' of +numerous dissipations, given as good an idea as is desirable of the +'rowing men' in that very antediluvian receptacle of elegant +scholarship; are all present evidences of the affectionate interest with +which the graduate reverts to his college days. In like manner _Student +Life in Scotland_ has engaged the late attention of venerable +_Blackwood_, while the pages of _Putnam_, in _Life in a Canadian +College_,[2] and _Fireside Travels_,[3] have given some idea of things +nearer home, some little time ago. But while numerous pamphlets and +essays have been written on our collegiate systems of education, the +general development and present doings of Young America in the +universities remain untouched. + +The academic influences exerted over American students are, it must be +premised, vastly different from those of the old world. Imprimis, our +colleges are just well into being. Reaching back into no dim antiquity, +their rise and progress are traceable from their beginnings--beginnings +not always the greatest. Thus saith the poet doctor of his Alma Mater: + + 'Pray, who was on the Catalogue + When college was begun? + Two nephews of the President, + And _the_ Professor's son, + (They turned a little Indian by, + As brown as any bun;) + Lord! how the Seniors knocked about + That Freshman class of one!' + +From small beginnings and short lives our colleges have gathered neither +that momentum of years heavy with mighty names and weighty memories, nor +of wealth heaping massive piles and drawing within their cloistered +walls the learning of successive centuries which carries the European +universities crashing down the ages, though often heavy laden with the +dead forms of mediæval preciseness. No established church makes with +them common cause, no favoring and influential aristocracy gives them +the careless security of a complete protection. Their development thus +far has been under very different influences. Founded in the wilderness +by our English ancestors, they were, at first, it is true, in their +course of study and in foolish formula of ceremony an imperfect copy of +trans-Atlantic originals. Starting from this point, their course has +been shaped according to the peculiar genius of our institutions and +people. Republican feeling has dispensed with the monastic dress, the +servile demeanor toward superiors, and the ceremonious forms which had +lost their significance. The peculiar wants of a new country have +required not high scholarship, but more practical learning to meet +pressing physical wants. Again, our numerous religious sects requiring +each a nursery of its own children, and the great extent of our country, +have called, or seemed to call (in spite of continually increasing +facility of intercourse) for some one hundred and twenty colleges within +our borders. Add to this a demand not peculiar but general--the +increased claim of the sciences and of modern languages upon our +regard--and the accompanying fallacy of supposing Latin and Greek +heathenish and useless, and we have a summary view of the influences +bearing upon our literary institutions. Hence both good and evil have +arisen. Our colleges easily conforming in their youthful and supple +energy, have met the demands of the age. They have thrown aside their +monastic gowns and quadrangular caps. They have in good degree given up +the pedantic follies of Latin versification and Hebrew orations. Their +walls have arisen alike in populous city and lonely hamlet, and in +poverty and insignificance they have been content could they give depth +and breadth to any small portion of the national mind. They have +conceded to Science the place which her rapid and brilliant progress +demanded. On the other hand, however, we see long and well-proven +systems of education profaned by the ignorant hands of superficial +reformers. We see the colleges themselves dragging on a precarious life, +yet less revered than cherished by fostering sects, and more hooted at +by the advocates of potato-digging and other practical pursuits, than +defended by their legitimate protectors. It is not to be denied that +there is a powerful element of Materialism among us, and that too often +we neither appreciate nor respect the earnest, abstruse scholar. The +progress of humanity must be shouted in popular catch-words from the +house-tops, and the noisy herald appropriates the laudation of him who +in pain and weariness traced the hidden truth. We hear men of enlarged +thought and lofty views derided as old fogies because beyond unassisted +appreciation, until we are half-tempted to believe the generation to be +multiplied Ephraims given to their idols, who had best be let alone. + +The American student, under these influences, differs somewhat from his +European brethren. He is younger by two or three years. Though generally +from the better class, he is more, perhaps, identified with the mass of +the people, and is more of a politician than a scholar. His remarks upon +the Homeric dialects, however laudatory, are most suspiciously vague, +and though he escape such slight errors as describing the Gracchi as a +barbarous tribe in the north of Italy or the Piræus as a meat-market of +Athens, you must beware of his classical allusions. On the other hand he +is more moral, a more independent thinker and a freer man than his +prototype across the sea. His fault is, as Bristed says, that he is +superficial; his virtue, that he is straightforward and earnest in +aiming at practical life. + +Such may suffice for a few general remarks. But some memories of one of +our most important universities will better set forth the habits and +customs of the joyous student-life than farther wearisome generality. + +The pleasant days are gone that I dreamed away beneath the green arcades +of the fair Elm City. But still come the budding spring and the blooming +summer to embower those quiet streets and to fill the morning hour with +birds' sweet singing. Still comes the gorgeous autumn--the dead summer +lain in state--and the cloud-robed winter to round the circling year. +Still streams the golden sunlight through the green canopies of tented +elms, and still, I ween, do pretty school-girls (feminine of student) +loiter away in flirting fascination the holiday afternoons beneath their +shade. Still do our memories haunt those old walks we loved so well: the +avenue shaded and silent like grove of Academe, fit residence of +colloquial man of science or genial metaphysician; the old cemetery with +its brown ivy-grown wall, its dark, massive evergreens, and moss-grown +stones, that, before years had effaced the inscription, told the mortal +story of early settler; elm-arched Temple street, where the midnight +moon shone so softly through the dark masses of foliage and slept so +sweetly on the sloping green. Still do those old wharves and +warehouses--ancient haunts of colonial commerce and scenes of +continental struggle--rest there in dusty quiet, hearing but murmurs of +the noisy merchant-world without; and the fair bay lies silent among +those green hills that slope southward to the Sound. Methinks I hear the +ripple of its moonlit waves as in the summer night it upbore our gallant +boat and its fair freight; the far-off music stealing o'er the bright +waters; the distant rattling of some paid-out cable as a newly arrived +bark anchors down the bay; or the lonely baying of a watch-dog at some +farm-house on the hight. I see the sail-boats bending under their canvas +and dashing the salt spray from their bows as they rush through the +smooth water, and the oyster-boats cleaving the clear brine like an +arrow, bound for Fair Haven, of many shell-fish; while sturdy sloops and +schooners--suggestive of lobsters or pineapples--bow their big heads +meekly and sway themselves at rest. I see again those long lines of +green-wooded slope, here crowned by a lonely farm-house musing solitary +on the hills as it looks off on the blue Sound, there ending abruptly in +a weather-worn cliff of splintered trap, or anon bringing down some +arable acres to the very beach, where a gray old cottage, kept in +countenance by two or three rugged poplars, like the fisher's hut, + + 'In der blauen Fluth sich beschaut.' + +Nor can I soon forget those wild hillsides, so glorious both when the +summer floods of foliage came pouring down their sides, and when autumn, +favorite child of the year, donned his coat of many colors and came +forth to join his brethren. Then, on holiday-afternoon, free from +student-care, we climbed the East or West Rock, and looked abroad over +the distant city-spires, rock-ribbed hillside and sail-dotted sea; or +threading the devious path to the Judges' Cave, where tradition said +that in colonial times the regicides, Goffe and Whalley, lay hidden, +read on the lone rock that in the winter wilderness overhung their bleak +hiding-place, in an old inscription carved not without pain, in quaint +letters of other years, the stern and stirring old watchword: + + +'RESISTANCE TO TYRANTS IS OBEDIENCE TO GOD.' + + +Or, going further, we climbed Mount Carmel, and looked from its steep +cliff down into the solitary rock-strewn valley-- + + 'Where storm and lightning from that huge gray wall, + Had tumbled down vast blocks, and at the base + Dashed them in fragments.' + +Or went on to the Cheshire hillside, where the Roaring Brook, tumbling +down the steep ravine, flashed its clear waters into whitest foam, and +veiled the unsightly rocks with its snowy spray; or, perchance, in +cumbrous boat, floated upon Lake Saltonstall, hermit of ponds, set like +a liquid crystal in the emerald hills--an eyesore to luckless piscatory +students, but highly favored of all lovers of ice, whether applied to +the bottoms of ringing High Dutchers, or internally in shape of summer +refrigerators. + +In the midst of these pleasant haunts and this fair city, lies a sloping +green of twenty or twenty-five acres, girt and bisected by rows of huge +elms, and planted with three churches, whose spires glisten above the +tall trees, and with a stuccoed State House, whose peeled columns and +crumbling steps are more beautiful in conception than execution. On the +upper side, looking down across, stretched out in a long line of eight +hundred feet, the buildings of the college stand, in dense shade. Ugly +barracks, four stories high, built of red brick, without a line of +beautifying architecture, they yet have an ancient air of repose, buried +there in the deep shade, that pleases even the fastidious eye. In the +rear, an old laboratory, diverted from its original gastronomic purpose +of hall, which in our American colleges has dispensed with commons, a +cabinet, similarly metamorphosed, and containing some magnificent +specimens of the New World's minerals; a gallery of portraits of +college, colonial and revolutionary worthies--a collection of rare +historical interest; a Gothic pile of library, built of brown sandstone, +its slender towers crowned with grinning, uncouth heads, cut in stone, +which are pointed out to incipient Freshmen as busts of members of the +college faculty; and a castellated Gothic structure of like material, +occupied by the two ancient literary fraternities, and notable toward +the close of the academic year as the place where isolated Sophomores +and Seniors write down the results of two years' study in the Biennial +Examination--make up the incongruous whole of the college proper. + +Such is the place where, about the middle of September, if you have been +sojourning through the very quiet vacation in one of the almost deserted +hotels of New-Haven, you will begin to be conscious of an awakening from +the six weeks' torpor, (the _long_ vacation of hurried Americans who +must study forty weeks of the year.) Along the extended row of brick you +will begin to discern aproned 'sweeps' clearing the month and a half's +accumulated rubbish from the walks, beating carpets on the grass-plots, +re-lining with new fire-brick the sheet-iron cylinder-stoves, more +famous for their eminent Professor improver (may his shadow never be +less!) than for their heating qualities, or furbishing old furniture +purchased at incredibly low prices, of the last class, to make good as +new for the Freshmen, periphrastically known as 'the young gentlemen who +have lately entered college.' It may be, too, that your practiced eye +will detect one of these fearful youths, who, coming from a thousand +miles in the interior--from the prairies of the West or the bayous of +the South--has arrived before his time, and now, blushing unseen, is +reconnoitering the intellectual fortress which he hopes soon to storm +with 'small Latin and less Greek,' or, perchance, remembering with sad +face the distance of his old home and the strangeness of the new. A few +days more, and hackmen drive down Chapel street hopefully, and return +with trunks and carpet-bags outside and diversified specimens of +student-humanity within--a Freshman, in spite of his efforts, showing +that his as yet undeveloped character is '_summâ integritate et +innocentiâ_;' a Sophomore, somewhat flashy and bad-hatted, a _hard_ +student in the worse sense, with much of the '_fortiter in re_' in his +bearing; a Junior, exhibiting the antithetical '_suaviter in modo_;' a +Senior, whose '_otium cum dignitate_' at once distinguishes him from the +vulgar herd of common mortals. Then succeed hearty greetings of meeting +friends, great purchase of text-books, and much changing of rooms; +students being migratory by nature, and stimulated thereto by the +prospect of choice of better rooms conceded to advanced academical +standing. In which state of things the various employés of college, +including the trusty colored Aquarius, facetiously denominated Professor +_Paley_, under the excitement of numerous quarters, greatly multiply +their efforts. + +But the chief interest of the opening year is clustered around the class +about to unite its destinies with the college-world. A new century of +students-- + + 'The igneous men of Georgia, + The ligneous men of Maine,' + +the rough, energetic Westerner, the refined, lethargic metropolitan, +with here and there a missionary's son from the Golden Horn or the isles +of the Pacific or even a Chinese, long-queued and meta-physical, are to +be divided between the two rival literary Societies.[4] These having +during the last term with great excitement elected their officers for +the coming 'campaign,' and held numerous 'indignation meetings,' where +hostile speeches and inquiries into the numbers to be sent down by the +various academies were diligently prosecuted to the great neglect of +debates and essays, now join issue with an adroitness on the part of +their respective members which gives great promise for political life. +Committees at the station-house await the arrival of every train, accost +every individual of right age and verdancy; and, having ascertained that +he is not a city clerk nor a graduate, relapsed into his ante-academic +state, offer their services as amateur porters, guides, or tutors, +according to the wants of the individual. Having thus ingratiated +themselves, various are the ways of procedure. Should the new-comer +prove confiding, perhaps he is told that 'there is _one_ vacancy left in +our Society, and if you wish, I will try and get it for you,' which, +after a short absence, presumed to be occupied with strenuous effort, +the amiable advocate succeeds in doing, to the great gratitude of his +Freshman friend. But should he prove less tractable, and wish to hear +both sides, then some comrade is perhaps introduced as belonging to the +other Society, and is sorely worsted in a discussion of the respective +excellencies of the two rival fraternities. Or if he be religious, the +same disguised comrade shall visit him on the Sabbath, and with much +profanity urge the claims of his supposititious Society. By such, and +more honorable means, the destiny of each is soon fixed, and only a few +stragglers await undecided the so-called 'Statement of Facts,' when with +infinite laughter and great hustling of 'force committees,' they are +preädmitted to 'Brewster's Hall' to hear the three appointed orators of +each Society laud themselves and deny all virtue to their opponents; +which done, in chaotic state of mind they fall an easy prey to the +strongest, and with the rest are initiated that very evening with lusty +cheers and noisy songs and speeches protracted far into the night. + +Nor less notable are the Secret Societies, two or three of which exist +in every class, and are handed down yearly to the care of successors. +With more quiet, but with busy effort, their members are carefully +chosen and pledged, and with phosphorous, coffins, and dead men's bones, +are awfully admitted to the mysteries of Greek initials, private +literature, and secret conviviality. Being picked men, and united, they +each form an _imperium in imperio_ in the large societies much used by +ambitious collegians. Curious as it may seem, too, many of these +societies have gained some influence and notoriety beyond college walls. +The Psi Upsilon, Alpha Delta Phi, and Delta Kappa Epsilon Societies, are +now each ramified through a dozen or more colleges, having annual +conventions, attended by numerous delegates from the several chapters, +and by graduate members of high standing in every department of letters. +Yet they have no deep significance like that of the Burschenschaft. + +Close treading on the heels of Society movements, comes the annual +foot-ball game between the Freshmen and Sophomores. The former having +_ad mores majorum_ given the challenge and received its acceptance, on +some sunny autumn afternoon you may see the rival classes of perhaps a +hundred men each, drawn up on the Green in battle and motley array, the +latter consisting of shirt and pants, unsalable even to the sons of +Israel, and huge boots, perhaps stuffed with paper to prevent hapless +abrasion of shins. The steps of the State House are crowded with the +'upper classes,' and ladies are numerous in the balconies of the +New-Haven Hotel. The umpires come forward, and the ground is cleared of +intruders. There is a dead silence as an active Freshman, retiring to +gain an impetus, rushes on; a general rush as the ball is _warned_; then +a seizure of the disputed bladder, and futile endeavors to give it +another impetus, ending in stout grappling and the endeavor to force it +through. Now there is fierce issue; neither party gives an inch. Now +there is a side movement and roll of the struggling orb as to relieve +the pressure. Now one party gives a little, then closes desperately in +again on the encouraged enemy. Now a dozen are down in a heap, and there +is momentary cessation, then up and pressing on again. Here a fiery +spirit grows pugnacious, but is restrained by his class-mates; there +another has his shirt torn off him, and presents the picturesque +appearance of an amateur scarecrow. There are, in short, both + + 'Breaches of peace and pieces of breeches,' + +until the stronger party carries the ball over the bounds, or it gets +without the crowd unobserved by most, and goes off hurriedly under the +direction of some swift-footed player to the same goal. Then mighty is +the cheering of the victors, and woe-begone the looks, though defiant +the groans of the vanquished. And thus, with much noise and dispute, and +great confounding of umpire, they continue for three, four, or five +games, or until the evening chapel-bell calls to prayers. In the evening +the victors sing pæans of victory by torch-light on the State House +steps, and bouquets, supposed to be sent by the fair ones of the +balconies, are presented and received with great glorification. + +Nor less exciting and interesting in college annals, is the Burial of +Euclid. The incipient Sophomores, assisted by the other classes, must +perform duly the funeral rites of their friend of Freshman-days, by +nocturnal services at the 'Temple.' Wherefore, toward midnight of some +dark Wednesday evening in October, you may see masked and +fantastically-dressed students by twos and threes stealing through the +darkness to the common rendezvous. An Indian chief of gray leggins and +grave demeanor goes down arm in arm with the prince of darkness, and a +portly squire of the old English school communes sociably with a +patriotic continental. Here is a reïnforcement of 'Labs,' (students of +chemistry,) noisy with numerous fish-horns; there a detachment of +'Medics,' appropriately armed with thigh-bones, according to their +several resources. Then, when gathered within the hall, a crowded mass +of ugly masks, shocking bad hats, and antique attire, look down from +the steep slope of seats upon the stage where lies the effigy of Father +Euclid, in inflammable state. After a voluntary by the 'Blow Hards,' +'Horne Blenders,' or whatever facetiously denominated band performs the +music, there is a mighty singing of some Latin song, written with more +reference to the occasion than to correct quantities, of which the +following opening stanza may serve as a specimen: + + 'Fundite nunc lacrymas, + Plorate Yalenses: + Euclid rapuerunt fata, + Membra et ejus inhumata + Linquimus tres menses.' + +The wild, grotesque hilarity of those midnight songs can never be +forgotten. Then come poem and funeral oration, interspersed with songs, +and music by the band--'Old Grimes is dead,' 'Music from the Spheres,' +and other equally solemn and rare productions. Then are torches lighted, +and two by two the long train of torch-bearers defiles through the +silent midnight streets to the sound of solemn music, and passing by the +dark cemetery of the real dead, bear through 'Tutor's Lane' the coffin +of their mathematical ancestor. They climb the hill beyond, and commit +him to the flames, invoking Pluto, in Latin prayer, and chanting a final +dirge, while the flare of torches, the fearful grotesqueness of each +uncouth disguised wight, and the dark background of the encircling +forest, make the wild mirth almost solemn. + +So ends the fun of the closing year; and with the exception of the +various excitements of burlesque debate on Thanksgiving eve, when the +smallest Freshman in either Society is elected President _pro tempore;_ +of the _noctes ambrosianæ_ of the secret societies; of appointments, +prize essays, and the periodical issue of the _Yale Literary_, now a +venerable periodical of twenty years' standing; the severe drill of +college study finds little relaxation during the winter months. Three +recitations or lectures each day, a review each day of the last lesson, +review of and examination on each term's study, with two biennial +examinations during the four years' course, require great diligence to +excel, and considerable industry to keep above water. But with the +returning spring the unused walks again are paced, and the dry keels +launched into the vernal waters. Again, in the warm twilight of evening, +you hear the laugh and song go up under the wide-spreading elms. Now, +too, comes the Exhibition of the Wooden Spoon, where the low-appointment +men burlesque the staid performances of college, and present the lowest +scholar on the appointment-list with an immense spoon, handsomely carved +from rosewood, and engraved with the convivial motto: '_Dum vivimus +vivamus_.' + +Then, too, come those summer days upon the harbor, when the fleet +club-boats, and their stalwart crews, like those of Alcinous, + + [Greek: 'kouroi anarriptein ala pêdô,'] + +in their showy uniforms, push out from Ryker's; some bound upward past +the oyster-beds of Fair Haven, away up among the salt-marsh meadows, +where the Quinnipiac wanders under quaint old bridges among fair, green +hills; some for the Light, shooting out into the broad waters of the +open bay, their feathered oars flashing in the sunlight; some for +Savin's Rock, where among the cool cedars that overshadow the steep +rock, they sing uproarious student-songs until the dreamy beauty of +ocean, with its laughing sunlight, its white sails, and green, quiet +shores, like visible music, shall steal in and fill the soul until the +noisy hilarity becomes eloquent silence. And now, as in the +twilight-hour they are again afloat, you may hear the song again: + + 'Many the mile we row, boys, + Merry, merry the song; + The joys of long ago, boys, + Shall be remembered long. + Then as we rest upon the oar, + We raise the cheerful strain, + Which we have often sung before, + And gladly sing again.' + +But perhaps the most interesting day of college-life is +'Presentation-Day,' when the Seniors, having passed the various ordeals +of _viva voce_ and written examinations, are presented by the senior +tutor to the President, as worthy of their degrees. This ceremony is +succeeded by a farewell poem and oration by two of the class chosen for +the purpose, after which they partake of a collation with the college +faculty, and then gather under the elms in front of the colleges. They +seat themselves on a ring of benches, inside of which are placed huge +tubs of lemonade, (the strongest drink provided for public occasions,) +long clay pipes, and great store of mildest Turkey tobacco. Here, led on +by an amateur band of fiddlers, flutists, etc., through the long +afternoon of 'the leafy month of June,' surrounded by the other classes +who crowd about in cordial sympathy, they smoke manfully, harangue +enthusiastically, laugh uproariously, and sing lustily, beginning always +with the glorious old Burschen song of 'Gaudeamus': + + 'Gaudeamus igitur + Juvenes dum sumus: + Post jucundam juventutem, + Post molestam senectutem, + Nos habebit humus.' + + * * * * * + + 'Pereat tristitia, + Pereant osores, + Pereat diabolus, + Quivis antiburschius + Atque irrisores.' + +Then as the shadows grow long, perhaps they sing again those stirring +words which one returning to the third semi-centennial of his Alma +Mater, wrote with all the warmth and power of manly affection: + + * * * * * + + 'Count not the tears of the long-gone years, + With their moments of pain and sorrow; + But laugh in the light of their memories bright, + And treasure them all for the morrow. + Then roll the song in waves along, + While the hours are bright before us, + And grand and hale are the towers of Yale, + Like guardians towering o'er us. + + * * * * * + + 'Clasp ye the hand 'neath the arches grand + That with garlands span our greeting. + With a silent prayer that an hour as fair + May smile on each after meeting: + And long may the song, the joyous song, + Roll on in the hours before us, + And grand and hale may the elms of Yale + For many a year bend o'er us.' + +Then standing in closer circle, they pass around to give, each to each, +a farewell grasp of the hand; and amid that extravagant merriment the +lips begin to quiver, and eyes grow dim. Then, two by two, preceded by +the miscellaneous band, playing 'The Road to Boston,' and headed by a +huge base-viol, borne by two stout fellows, and played by a third, they +pass through each hall of the long line of buildings, giving farewell +cheers, and at the foot of one of the tall towers, each throws his +handful of earth on the roots of an ivy, which, clinging about those +brown masses of stone, in days to come, he trusts will be typical of +their mutual, remembrance as he breathes the silent prayer: 'Lord, keep +our memories green!' + +So end the college-days of these most uproarious of mirth-makers and +hardest of American students; and the hundred whose joys and sorrows +have been identified through four happy years, are dispersed over the +land. They are partially gathered again at Commencement, but the broken +band is never completely united. On the third anniversary of their +graduation, the first class-meeting takes place; and the first happy +father is presented with a silver cup, suitably inscribed. On the tenth, +twentieth, and other decennial years, the gradually diminishing band, in +smaller and smaller numbers, meet about the beloved shrine, until only +two or three gray-haired men clasp the once stout hand and renew the +remembrance of 'the days that are gone.' + + 'They come ere life departs, + Ere winged death appears. + To throng their joyous hearts + With dreams of sunnier years: + To meet once more + Where pleasures sprang, + And arches rang + With songs of yore.' + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: 'In the fourteenth century, Novella de Andrea, daughter of +the celebrated canonist, frequently occupied her father's chair; and her +beauty was so striking, that a curtain was drawn before her in order not +to distract the attention of the students.'] + +[Footnote 2: Vol. i. p. 392.] + +[Footnote 3: Vol. iii. pp. 379 and 473.] + +[Footnote 4: The Linonian Society was founded in 1753; The Brothers in +Unity, fifteen years later, in 1768.] + + + + +GO IN AND WIN. + + + Will nothing rouse the Northmen + To see what they can do? + When in one day of our war-growth + The South are growing two? + When they win a victory it always counts a pair, + One at home in Dixie, and another _over there_! + + North, you have spent your millions! + North, you have sent your men! + But if the war ask billions, + You must give it all again. + Don't stop to think of what you've done--it's very fine and true-- + But in fighting for our _life_, the thing is, _what we've yet to do_. + + Who dares to talk of party, + And the coming President, + When the rebels threaten 'bolder raids,' + And all the land is rent? + How _dare_ we learn 'they gather strength,' by every telegraph, + If an army of a million could have scattered them like chaff! + + What means it when the people + Are prompt with blood and gold, + That this devil-born rebellion + Is growing two years old? + The Nigger feeds them as of old, and keeps away their fears, + While 'gayly into battle' go the 'Southern cavaliers.' + + And the Richmond _Whig_, which lately + Lay groveling in mud, + Shows its mulatto insolence, + And prates of 'better blood:' + 'We ruled them in the Union; we can thrash them out of bounds: + Ye are mad, ye drunken Helots--cap off, ye Yankee hounds!' + + Yet the Northman has the power, + And the North would not be still! + Rise up! rise up, ye rulers! + Send the people where ye will! + Don't organize your victories--fly to battle with your bands-- + If you can find the brains to lead, _we'll find the willing hands!_ + + + + +JOHN NEAL. + + +John Neal was born at the close of the last century, in Portland, Maine, +where he now resides; and during sixty years it has not been decided +whether he or his twin sister was the elder. + +He was born in 1793. When he was four weeks old, he was fatherless. His +school education began early, as his mother was a celebrated teacher. +From his mother's school he went to the town school, where he once +declared in our hearing that he 'got licked, frozen, and stupefied.' +That he had a rough time, may be inferred from the fact that his parents +were Quakers, and he, notwithstanding his peaceful birthright, _fought_ +his way through the school as 'Quaker Neal.' He went barefoot in those +days through a great deal of trouble. Somewhere in his early life, he +went to a Quaker boarding-school at Windham, where he always averred +that they starved him through two winters, till it was a luxury to get a +mouthful of brown bread that was not a crumb or fragment that some one +had left. At this school the boys learned to sympathize in advance with +Oliver Twist--to eat trash, till they would quarrel for a bit of salt +fish-skin, and to generalize in their hate of Friends from very narrow +data. We have heard Neal speak of the two winters he spent in that +school as by far the most miserable six or eight months of his whole +life. + +Very early, we think at the age of twelve years, he was imprisoned +behind a counter, and continued there till he was near twenty; and by +the time he was twenty one, he had worked his way to a retail shop of +his own in Court street, Boston. We next track him to Baltimore, where, +in 1815, if we are not out in our chronology, John Pierpont, John Neal, +and Joseph L. Lord were in partnership in a wholesale trade. Neal's +somersets in business--from partnership to wholesale jobbing, which he +went into on his own hook with a capital of _one hundred and fifty +dollars_, and as he once said, in speaking of this remarkable business +operation, 'with about as much credit as a lamp-lighter'--may not be any +more interesting to the public than they were to him then; so we shall +not be particular about them in this chapter of chronicles. + +At Baltimore he was very successful, after he got at it, in making +money, but failed after the peace in 1816. This failure made him a +lawyer. With his characteristic impetuosity, he renounced and denounced +trade, determined to study law, and beat the profession with its own +weapons. + +This impulse drove him at rather more than railroad speed. He studied as +if a demon chased him. By computation of then Justice Story, he +accomplished fourteen years' hard work in four. During this time he was +reading largely in half-a-dozen languages that he knew nothing of when +he began, _and maintaining himself_ by writing, either as editor of _The +Telegraph_, coëditor of _The Portico_, (for which he wrote near a volume +octavo in a year or two,) and also as joint-editor of Paul Allen's +_Revolution_, besides a tremendous avalanche of novels and poetry. We +have amused ourself casting up the amount of this four years' labor. It +seems entirely too large for the calibre of common belief, and we +suppose Neal will hardly believe us, especially if he have grown +luxurious and lazy in these latter days. Crowded into these four years, +we find: for the _Portico_ and _Telegraph_, and half-a-dozen other +papers, ten volumes; 'Keep Cool,' two volumes; 'Seventy-Six,' two +volumes; 'Errata,' two volumes; 'Niagara and Goldau,' two volumes; Index +to Niles' Register, three volumes; 'Otho,' one volume; 'Logan,' four +volumes; 'Randolph,' two volumes; Buckingham's Galaxy, Miscellanies, and +Poetry, two volumes; making the incredible quantity of thirty volumes. +He could no more have gone leisurely and carefully through this amount +of work, than a skater could walk a mile a minute on his skates. The +marvel is, that he got through it on any terms, not that he won his own +disrespect forever. We do not wonder that he manufactured more bayonets +than bee-stings for his literary armory, but we wonder that he became a +literary champion at all. With all the irons Neal had in the fire, we +are not to expect Addisonian paragraphs; and yet he has in his lifetime +been mistaken for Washington Irving, as we can show by an extract from +an old letter of his, which we will give by and by. + +A power that could produce what Neal produced between 1819 and 1823, +properly disciplined and economized, might have performed tasks +analogous to those of the lightning, since it has been put in harness +and employed to carry the mail. When genius has its day of humiliation +for the wasted water of life, Neal may put on sackcloth, for he never +economized his power; but for the soul's fire quenched in idleness, or +smothered in worldliness, certainly for these years, he need wear no +weeds. + +His novels are always like a rushing torrent, never like a calm stream. +They all are dignified with a purpose, with a determination to correct +some error, to remedy some abuse, to do good in any number of instances. +They are not unlike a field of teasels in blossom--there are the thorny +points of this strange plant, and the delicate and exceedingly beautiful +blossom beside, resting on the very points of a hundred lances, with +their lovely lilac bloom. Those who have lived where teasels grow will +understand this illustration. We doubt not it will seem very pointed and +proper to Neal. It must be remembered that the teasel is a very useful +article in dressing cloth, immense cards of them being set in machinery +and made to pass over the cloth and raise and clean the nap. A criticism +taking in all the good and bad points of these novels, would be too +extensive to pass the door of any review or magazine, unless in an +extra. They are full of the faults and virtues of their author's +unformed character. Rich as a California mine, we only wish they could +be passed through a gold-washer, and the genuine yield be thrown again +into our literary currency. + +The character of his poems is indicated by their titles, 'Niagara' and +'Goldau,' and by the _nom de plume_ he thought proper to publish them +under, namely, 'Jehu O. Cataract.' But portions of his poetry repudiate +this thunderous parentage, and are soft as the whispering zephyr or the +cooing of doves. The gentleness of strength has a double beauty: its +own, and that of contrast. Still, the predominating character of Neal's +poetry is the sweep of the wild eagle's wing and the roar of rushing +waters. + +We read his 'Otho' years since, when we were younger than now, and our +pulse beat stronger; and we read it 'holding our breath to the end'--or +this was the exact sensation we felt, as nearly as we can remember, +twelve years ago. + +The character of Neal's periodical writing was just suited to a working +country, that was in too great a hurry to dine decently. People wanted +to be arrested. If they could stop, they had brains enough to judge you +and your wares; but they needed to be lassoed first, and lashed into +quietness afterward, and then they would hear and revere the man who had +been 'smart' enough to conquer them. John Neal seemed to be conscious of +this without knowing it. A veritable woman in his intuitions, he spoke +from them, and the heart of the people responded. The term 'live Yankee' +was of his coinage, and it aptly christened himself. + +Neal went to Europe in 1823, and remained three years. That an American +could manage to maintain himself in England by writing, which Neal did, +is a pregnant fact. But his power is better proved than in this way. He +left America with a vow of temperance during his travels; he returned +with it unbroken. Honor to the strong man! He had traveled through +England and France, merely wetting his lips with wine. He wrote volumes +for British periodicals, and also his 'Brother Jonathan' in three +volumes. After looking over the catalogue of his labors for an hour, we +always want to draw a long breath and rest. There is no doubt that since +his return from Europe in 1826, he has written and published, in books +and newspapers, what would make at least one hundred volumes duodecimo. +It would be a hard fate for such an author to be condemned to read his +own productions, for he would never get time to read any thing else. + +Neal's peculiar style caused many oddities and extravagances to be laid +at his door that did not belong there. From this fact of style, people +thought he could not disguise himself on paper. This is a mistake, for +his papers in Miller's _European Magazine_ were attributed to Washington +Irving. We transcribe the paragraph of a letter from Neal, promised +above, and which we received years since: + + 'The papers I wrote for Miller's _European Magazine_ have been + generally attributed to no less a person than Washington Irving--a + man whom I resemble just about as much in my person as in my + writing. He, Addisonian and Goldsmithian to the back-bone, and + steeped to the very lips in what is called classical literature, of + which I have a horror and a loathing, as the deadest of all dead + languages; he, foil of subdued pleasantry, quiet humor, and genial + blandness, upon all subjects. I, altogether--but never mind. He is + a generous fellow, and led the way to all our triumphs in that + 'field of the cloth of gold' which men call the _literary_'. + +Neal went to England a sort of Yankee knight-errant to fight for his +country. He had the wisdom to fight with his visor down, and quarter on +the enemy. He took heavy tribute from _Blackwood_ and others for his +articles vindicating America, which came to be extravagantly quoted and +read. His article for _Blackwood_ on the Five Presidents and the Five +Candidates, portraying General Jackson to the life as he afterward +proved to be, was translated into most of the European languages. I +transcribe another paragraph from an old letter. It is too +characteristic to remain unread by the public: + + 'For my paper on the Presidents, _Blackwood_ sent me five guineas, + and engaged me as a regular contributor, which I determined to be. + But I ventured to write for other journals without consulting him; + whereat he grew tetchy and impertinent, and I blew him up sky-high, + recalled an article in type for which he had paid me _fifteen_ + guineas, (I wish he had kept it,) refunded the money, (I wish I + hadn't,) and left him forever. But this I will say: _Blackwood_ + behaved handsomely to me from first to last, with one small + exception, and showed more courage and good feeling toward '_my + beloved_ country' while I was at the helm of that department, than + any and all the editors, publishers, and proprietors in Britain. + Give the devil his due, I say!' + +This escapade with _Blackwood_ might have been a national loss; but +happily, Neal had accomplished his purpose--vindicated his country by +telling the truth, and by showing in himself the metal of one of her +sons. He had silenced the whole British battery of periodicals who had +been abusing America. He had forced literary England to a capitulation, +and he could well enough afford to leave his fifteen guineas at +_Blackwood's_, and go to France for recreation, as he did about this +time. + +In 1826 he returned to America, and applied for admission to the +New-York bar. This started a hornet's nest. He had been 'sarving up' too +many newspaper and other scribblers, to be left in peace any longer. +With an excellent opinion of himself, his contempt was often quite as +large, to say the least of it, as his charity; and he had doubtless, at +times, in England, ridiculed his countrymen to the full of their +deserving; knowing that if he admitted the debtor side honestly, he +would be allowed to fix the amount of credit without controversy. His +Yankees are alarming specimens, which a growing civilization has so +nearly 'used up' that they are now regarded somewhat like fossil remains +of some extinct species of animal. + +About the time Neal applied for admission to the New-York bar, a portion +of the people of Portland, stimulated by the aggrieved _literati_ above +mentioned, determined to elevate themselves into a mob _pro tem._, and +expel him from Portland. In the true spirit of his Quaker ancestry, who, +some one has said, always decided they were needed where they were not +wanted, Neal determined to stay in Portland, The mobocrats declared that +he was sold to the British. Neal retorted, in cool irony, that 'he only +wished he had got an offer.' They asserted that he was the mortal enemy +of our peculiar institutions, and that therefore he must be placarded +and mobbed. Hand-bills were issued, and widely circulated. But they did +not effect their object. They only drove this son of the Quakers to +_swear_ that he would stay in Portland. And he did stay, and established +a literary paper, though he once said to us that 'he would as soon have +thought of setting up a _Daily Advertiser_ in the Isle of Shoals three +months before.' + +His marriage took place about this time, and was, as he used to say, his +pledge for good behavior. His wife was one of the loveliest of +New-England's daughters, and looked as if she might tame a tiger by the +simple magic of her presence. It is several years since we have met +Neal, and near a dozen since we saw him in his home. At that time he +must have been greatly in fault not to be a proud and happy man. If a +calm, restful exterior, and a fresh and youthful beauty, are signs of +happiness, then Mrs. Neal was one of the happiest women in the world. +The delicate softness, the perfection of youth in her beauty, lives +still in our memory. It is one of those real charms that never drop +through the mind's meshes. + +Judging from Neal's impulsive nature, he was not the last man to do +something to be sorry for; but his wife and children looked as if they +were never sorry. We remember a little girl of some five or six years; +we believe they called her Maggie. Her dimpled cheek, her white round +neck and arms, and the perfect symmetry of her form, and the grace of +her motions, have haunted us these twelve years. We would not promise to +remember her as long or as well if we should see her again in these +days. But we made up our mind then, that we would rather be the father +of that child than the author of all Neal had written, or might have +written, even though he had been a wise and prudent man, and had done +his work as well as he doubtless wishes now that he had done it. Neal is +only half himself away from his beautiful home. There, he is in +place--an eagle in a nest lined with down, soft as eider. There his fine +taste is manifest in every thing. If we judge of his taste by his +rapidly-written works, we are sure to do him injustice. We find in him a +union of the most opposite qualities. We can not say a harmonious union. +An inflexible industry is not often united with a bird-like celerity and +grace of movement. With Neal, the two first have always been +combined--the whole on occasions, which might have been multiplied into +unbroken continuity if he had possessed the calm greatness that never +hastens and never rests. He did not rest; but through the first half of +his life, he surely forgot the Scripture which saith: 'He that believeth +shall not make haste.' It has often been asserted, that power which has +rest is greater than a turbulent power. We shall not attempt to settle +whether Erie or Niagara is greater, but we should certainly choose the +Lake for purposes of navigation. + +Many men are careless of their character in private, but sufficiently +careful in public. The reverse is true of Neal. He has never hesitated +to throw his gauntlet in the face of the public as he threw his letters +of introduction in the fire when he arrived in Europe. But when he comes +into the charmed circle of his home, he is neither reckless nor +pugilistic, but a downright gentleman. We don't mean to say that Neal +never gets in a passion in private, or that he never needed the +wholesome restraint of a strait-waistcoat in the disputes of a Portland +Lyceum or debating-club. We do not give illustrative anecdotes, because +a lively imagination can conceive them, and probably has manufactured +several that have been afloat; still, we dare guess that the subject has +sometimes given facts to base the fictions on. + +We speak of the past. A man with a forty-wildcat power imprisoned in him +is not very likely to travel on from youth to age, keeping the peace on +all occasions. Years bring a calming wisdom. The same man who once swore +five consecutive minutes, because he was forbidden by his landlady to +swear on penalty of leaving her house, and then made all the inmates +vote to refrain from profane language, and rigidly enforced the rule +thus _democratically_ established, is now, after a lapse of more than +thirty years, (particularly provoking impulse aside,) a careful and +dignified gentleman, who might be a Judge, if the public so willed. + +That a long line of intellectual and finely developed ancestry gives a +man a better patent of nobility than all the kings of all countries +could confer, is beginning to be understood and believed among us; +though the old battle against titles and privilege, and the hereditary +descent of both, for a time blinded Americans to the true philosophy of +noble birth. + +Neal's ancestors came originally from Scotland, and exemplify the +proverb that 'bluid is thicker than water,' in more ways than one. They +have a strong feeling of clanship, or, in other words, they are +convinced that it is an honor to be a Neal, and many of the last +generation have given proof positive that their belief is a fact. The +present generation we have little knowledge of, and do not know whether +they fulfill the promise of the name. + +Neal has done good service to the Democracy of our country in many ways, +besides being one of the first and bravest champions of woman's rights. +He has labored for our literature with an ability commensurate with his +zeal, and he has drawn many an unfledged genius from the nest, +encouraged him to try his wings, and magnetized him into +self-dependence. A bold heavenward flight has often been the +consequence. A prophecy of Neal's that an idea or a man would succeed, +has seldom failed of fulfillment. We can not say this of the many +aspiring magazines and periodicals that have solicited the charity of +his name. We recollect, when brass buttons were universally worn on +men's coats, a wag undertook to prove that they were very unhealthy, +from the fact that more than half the persons who wore them suffered +from chronic or acute disease, and died before they had reached a +canonical age. According to this mode of generalization, Neal could be +convicted of causing the premature death of nine tenths of the defunct +periodicals in this country--probably no great sin, if it really lay at +his door. + +In a brief outline sketch, such as we have chosen to produce, our +readers will perceive that only slight justice can be done to a man in +the manifold relations to men and things which contribute to form the +character. + +John Neal's personal appearance is a credit to the country. He is tall, +with a broad chest, and a most imposing presence. One of the finest +sights we ever saw, was Neal standing with his arms folded before a fine +picture. His devotion to physical exercise, and his personal example to +his family in the practice of it--training his wife and children to take +the sparring-gloves and cross the foils with him in those graceful +attitudes which he could perfectly teach, because they were fully +developed in himself--all this has inevitably contributed to the health +and beauty of his beautiful family. + +Few men have had so many right ideas of the art or science of living as +John Neal, and fewer still have acted upon them so faithfully. When we +last saw him, some ten years since--when he had lived more than half a +century--his eye had lost none of its original fire, not a nerve or +sinew was unbraced by care, labor, or struggle. He stood before us, a +noble specimen of the strong and stalwart growth of a new and +unexhausted land. + + NOTE,--The foregoing must have been written years ago, if + one may judge by the color of the paper; and as the writer is now + abroad, so as not to be within reach, the manuscript has been put + into the hands of a gentleman who has been more or less acquainted + with Mr. Neal from his boyhood up, and he has consented to finish + the article by bringing down the record to our day, and putting on + what he calls a 'snapper.' + +Most of what follows, if we do not wholly misunderstand the intimations +that accompany the manuscript, is in the very language of Mr. Neal +himself word for word; gathered up we care not how, whether from +correspondence or conversation, so that there is no breach of manly +trust and no indecorum to be charged. + +'As to my family,' he writes, in reply to some body's questioning, 'I +know not where they originated, nor how. Sometimes I have thought, +although I have never said as much before, that we must have come up of +ourselves--the spontaneous growth of a rude, rocky soil, swept by the +boisterous north-wind, and washed by the heavy surges of some great +unvisited sea. Of course, the writer you mention, who says that my +ancestors--if I ever had any--'came from Scotland,' must know something +that I never heard of, to the best of my recollection and belief. +Somewhere in England I have supposed they originated, and probably along +the coast of Essex; for there, about Portsmouth and Dover, I have always +felt so much at home in the graveyards--among my own household, as it +were, the names being so familiar to me, and the grave-stones now to be +seen in Portsmouth and Dover, New-Hampshire, where the Neals were first +heard of three or four generations ago, being duplicates of some I saw +in Portsmouth and Dover, England. + +'Others have maintained, with great earnestness and plausibility, as if +it were something to brag of, that we have the blood of Oliver Cromwell +in us; and one, at least, who has gone a-field into heraldry, and +strengthens every position with armorial bearings--which only goes to +show the unprofitableness of all such labor, so far as we are +concerned--that we are of the '_red_ O'Neals,' not the _learned_ +O'Neals, if there ever were any, but the 'red O'Neals of Ireland,' and +that I am, in fact, a lineal descendant of that fine fellow who +'_bearded_' Queen Elizabeth in her presence-chamber, with his right hand +clutching the hilt of his dagger. + +'But, for myself, I must acknowledge that if I ever had a +great-great-grandfather, I know not where to dig for him--on my father's +side, I mean; for on the side of my mother I have lots of grandfathers +and great-grandfathers--and furthermore this deponent sayeth not--up to +the days of George Fox; enough, I think, to show clearly that the Neals +did not originate among the aborigines of the New World, whatever may be +supposed to the contrary. And so, in a word, the whole sum and substance +of all I know about my progenitors, male and female, is, that they were +always a sober-minded, conscientious, hard-working race, with a way and +a will of their own, and a habit of seeing for themselves, and judging +for themselves, and taking the consequences. + +'Nor is it true that I am a 'large' or 'tall' man, though, in some +unaccountable way, always passing for a great deal more than I would +ever measure or weigh; and my own dear mother having lived and died in +the belief that I was good six feet, and well-proportioned, like my +father. My inches never exceeded five feet eight-and-a-half, and my +weight never varied from one hundred and forty-seven to one hundred and +forty-nine pounds, for about five-and-forty years; after which, getting +fat and lazy, I have come to weigh from one hundred and sixty-five to +one hundred and seventy-five pounds, without being an inch taller, I am +quite sure.' + +Mr. Neal owns up, it appears, to the following publications, omitted by +the writer of the article you mentioned: 'Rachel Dyer,' one volume; +'Authorship,' one volume; 'Brother Jonathan,' three volumes, (English +edition;) 'Ruth Elder,' one volume; 'One Word More;' 'True Womanhood,' +one volume; magazine articles, reviews, and stories in most of the +British and American monthlies, and in some of the quarterlies, to the +amount of twenty volumes, at least, duodecimo. In addition to which, he +has been a liberal contributor all his life to some of the ablest +newspapers of the age, and either sole or sub-editor, or associate, in +perhaps twenty other enterprises, most of which fell through. + +He claims, too--being a modest man--and others who know him best +acknowledge his claims, we see--that he revolutionized _Blackwood_ and +the British periodical press, at a time when they were all against us; +that he began the war on titles in this country, that he broke up the +lottery system and the militia system, and proposed (through the +_Westminster Review_) the only safe and reasonable plan of emancipation +that ever appeared; that with him originated the question of woman's +rights; that he introduced gymnasia to our people; and, in short, that +he has always been good for something, and always lived to some purpose. +'And furthermore deponent sayeth not.' + + + + +THE SOLDIER AND THE CIVILIAN. + + +When Charles Dickens expressed regret for having written his foolish +_American Notes_, and _Martin Chuzzlewit_, he 'improved the occasion' to +call us a large-hearted and good-natured people, or something to that +effect--I have not his _peccavi_ by me, and write from 'a favorable +general impression.' + +It is not weak vanity which may lead any American to claim that in this +compliment lies a great truth. The American _is_ large-hearted and +good-natured, and when a few of his comrades join in a good work, he +will aid them with a lavish and Jack-tar like generosity. Charity is +peculiarly at home in America. A few generations have accumulated, in +all the older States, hospitals, schools, and beneficent institutions, +practically equal in every respect to those which have been the slow +growth of centuries in any European country. The contributions to the +war, whether of men or money, have been incredible. And there is no +stint and no grumbling. The large heart is as large and generous as +ever. + +The war has, however, despite all our efforts, become an almost settled +institution. This is a pity--we all feel it bitterly, and begin to grow +serious. Still there is no flinching. Flinching will not help; we must +go on in the good cause, in God's name. 'Shall there not be clouds as +well as sunshine?' 'Go in, then'--that is agreed upon. Draft your men, +President Lincoln; raise your money, Mr. Chase, we are ready. To the +last man and the last dollar we are ready. History shall speak of the +American of this day as one who was as willing to spend money for +national honor as he was earnest and keen in gathering it up for private +emolument. Go ahead! + +But let us do every thing advisedly and wisely. + +In the first flush of war, it was not necessary to look so closely at +the capital. We pulled out our loose change and bank-notes, and +scattered them bravely--as we should. Now that more and still more are +needed, we should look about to see how to turn every thing to best +account. For instance, there is the matter of soldiers. Those who rose +in 1861, and went impulsively to battle, acted gloriously--even more +noble will it be with every volunteer who _now_, after hearing of the +horrors of war, still resolutely and bravely shoulders the musket and +dares fate. God sends these times to the world and to men as 'jubilees' +in which all who have lost an estate, be it of a calling or a social +position, may regain it or win a new one. + +But still we want to present _every_ inducement. Already the lame and +crippled soldiers are beginning to return among us. The poor souls, +ragged and sun-burnt, may be seen at every corner. They sit in the parks +with unhealed wounds; they hobble along the streets, many of them weary +and worn; poor fellows! they are greater, and more to be envied than +many a fresh fopling who struts by. And the people feel this. They treat +them kindly, and honor them. + +But would it not be well if some general action could be adopted on the +subject of taking care of all the incurables which this war is so +rapidly sending us? If every township in America would hold meetings and +provide honorably in some way for the returned crippled soldiers, they +would assume no great burden, and would obviate the most serious +drawback which the country is beginning to experience as regards +obtaining volunteers. It has already been observed by the press, that +the scattering of these poor fellows over the country is beginning to +have a discouraging effect on those who should enter the army. It is a +pity; we would very gladly ignore the fact, and continue to treat the +question solely _con entusiasmo_, and as at first; but what is the use +of endeavoring to shirk facts which will only weigh more heavily in the +end from being inconsidered now? Let us go to work generously, +great-heartedly, and good-naturedly, to render the life of every man who +has been crippled for the country as little of a burden as possible. + +Dear readers, it will not be sufficient to guarantee to these men a +pauper's portion among you. I do not pretend to say what you should give +them, or what you should do for them. I only know that there are but two +nations on the face of the earth capable of holding town-meetings and +acting by spontaneous democracy for themselves. One of these is +represented by the Russian serfs, who administer their _mir_ or +'commune' with a certain beaver-like instinct, providing for every man +his share of land, his social position, his rights, so far as they are +able. The Englishman, or German, or Frenchman, is _not_ capable of this +natural town-meeting sort of action. He needs 'laws,' and government, +and a lord or a squire in the chair, or a demagogue on the rostrum. The +poor serf does it by custom and instinct. + +The Bible Communism of the Puritans, and the habit of discussing all +manner of secular concerns in meeting, originated this same ability in +America. To this, more than to aught else, do we owe the growth of our +country. One hundred Americans, transplanted to the wild West and left +alone, will, in one week, have a mayor, and 'selectmen,' a town-clerk, +and in all probability a preacher and an editor. One hundred Russian +serfs will not rise so high as this; but leave them alone in the steppe, +and they will organize a _mir_, elect a _starosta_, or 'old man,' divide +their land very honestly, and take care of the cripples! + +Such nations, but more especially the American, can find out for +themselves, much better than any living editor can tell them, how to +provide liberally for those who fought while they remained at home. The +writer may suggest to them the subject--they themselves can best 'bring +it out.' + +In trials like these it is very essential that our habits of meeting, +discussing and practically acting on such measures, should be more +developed than ever. We have come to the times which _test_ republican +institutions, and to crises when the public meeting--the true +corner-stone of all our practical liberties--should be brought most +boldly, freely, and earnestly into action. Politics and feuds should +vanish from every honorable and noble mind, and all unite in cordial +coöperation for the good work. Friends, there is _nothing_ you can not +do, if you would only get together, inspire one another, and do your +_very best_. You could raise an army which would drive these rebel +rascals howling into their Dismal Swamps, or into Mexico, in a month, if +you would only combine in earnest and do all you can. + +Hitherto the man of ease, and the Respectable, disgusted by the +politicians, has neglected such meetings, and left them too much to the +Blackguard to manage after his own way. But this is a day of politics no +longer; at least, those who try to engineer the war with a view to the +next election, are in a fair way to be ranked with the enemies of the +country, and to earn undying infamy. The only politics which the honest +man now recognizes is, the best way to save the country; to raise its +armies and fight its battles. It is not McClellan or anti-McClellan, +which we should speak of, but anti-Secession. And paramount among the +principal means of successfully continuing the war, I place this, of +properly caring for the disabled soldier, and of placing before those +who have not as yet enlisted, the fact, that come what may, they will be +well looked after, for life. + +As I said, the common-sense of our minor municipalities will abundantly +provide for these poor fellows, if a spirit can be awakened which shall +sweep over the country and induce the meetings to be held. In many, +something has already been done. But something liberal and large is +requisite. Government will undoubtedly do its share; and this, if +properly done, will greatly relieve our local commonwealths. Here, +indeed, we come to a very serious question, which has been already +discussed in these pages--more boldly, as we are told, than our +cotemporaries have cared to treat it, and somewhat in advance of others. +We refer to our original proposition to liberally divide Southern lands +among the army, and convert the retired soldier to a small planter. Such +men would very soon contrive to hire the 'contraband,' get him to +working, and make something better of him than planterocracy ever did. +At least, this is what Northern ship-captains and farmers contrive to +do, in their way, with numbers of coal-black negroes, and we have no +doubt that the soldier-planter will manage, 'somehow,' to get out a +cotton-crop, even with the aid of hired negroes! Here, again, a bounty +could be given to the wounded. Observe, we mean a bounty which shall, to +as high a degree as is possible or expedient, fully recompense a man for +losing a limb. And as we can find in Texas alone, land sufficient to +nobly reward a vast proportion of our army, it will be seen that I do +not propose any excessive or extravagant reward. + +Between our municipalities and our government, _much_ should be done. +But will not this prove a two-stool system of relief, between which the +disbanded soldier would fall to the ground? Not necessarily. Let our +towns and villages do their share, pledging themselves to take _good_ +care of the disabled veteran, and to find work for all until Government +shall apportion the lands of the conquered among the army. + +And let all this be done _soon_. Let it forthwith form a part of the +long cried for 'policy' which is to inspire our people. If this had been +a firmly determined thing from the beginning, and if we had _dared_ to +go bravely on with it, instead of being terrified at every proposal to +_act_, by the yells and howls of the Northern secessionists, we might +have cleared Dixie out as fire clears tow. 'The enemy,' said one who had +been among them, 'have the devil in them.' If our men had something +solid to look forward to, they too, would have the devil in them, and no +mistake. They fight bravely as it is, without much inducement beyond +patriotism and a noble cause. But the 'secesh' soldier has more than +this--he has the desperation of a traitor in a bad cause, of a fanatic +and of a natural savage. It is no slur at the patriotism of our troops +to say that they would fight better for such a splendid inducement as +we hold out. + +We may as well do all we can for the army--at home and away, here and +there, with all our hearts and souls. For it will come to that sooner or +later. The army is a terrible power, and its power has been, and is to +be, terribly exerted. If we would organize it betimes, prevent it from +becoming a social trouble, or rather make of it a great social support +and a _help_ instead of a future hindrance and a drag, we must be busy +at work providing for it. There it is--destined, perhaps, to rise to a +million--the flower, strength, and intellect of America, our productive +force, our brain--yes, the great majority of our mills, and looms, and +printing-presses, and all that is capital-producing, are there, in those +uniforms. There, friends, lie towns and cities, towers and palace-halls, +literature and national life--for there are the brains and arms which +make these things. Those uniforms are not to be, at least, _should not_ +be, forever there. But manage meanly and weakly and stingily _now_, and +you destroy the cities and fair castles, the uniform remains in the +myriad ranks, war becomes interminable, the soldier becomes nothing but +a soldier--God avert the day!--and you will find yourself some day +telling your grand-children--if you have any, for I can inform you that +the chances of war diminish many other chances--how 'things _might_ have +been, and how finely we _might_ have conquered the enemy and had an +undivided country--God bless us!' + +Will the WOMEN of America take no active part in this movement? + +Many years ago, a German writer--one Kirsten--announced the +extraordinary fact, that in the Atlantic States the proportion of women +who died unmarried, or of 'old maids,' was larger than in any European +country. It is certainly true that, owing to the high standard of +expenses adopted by the children of respectable American parents--and +what American is not 'respectable'?--we are far less apt to rush into +'imprudent' marriages than is generally supposed. But what proportion of +unmarried dames will there be, if drafting continues, and the war +becomes a permanent annual subject of draft? The prospect is seriously +and simply frightful! The wreck of morality in France caused by +Napoleon's wars is notorious, for previous to that time the French +peasantry were not so debauched as they subsequently became. But this +shocking subject requires no comment. + +On with the war! Drive it, push it, send it howling and hissing on like +the wild tornado, like the mad levin-brand, right into the foe! Pay the +soldier--promise--pledge--do any thing and every thing; but raise an +overwhelming force, and end the war. + +Up and fight! + +It is better to die now than see such disaster as awaits this country if +war become a fixed disease. + + + + +VOLUNTEER BOYS. [1750.] + + + 'Hence with the lover who sighs o'er his wine, + Chloes and Phillises toasting; + Hence with the slave who will whimper and whine, + Of ardor and constancy boasting; + Hence with Love's joys, + Follies and noise. + The toast that _I_ give is: 'The Volunteer Boys!'' + + + + +AUTHOR-BORROWING. + + +Bulwer, in narrating the literary career of a young Chinese, states how +one of his works was very severely handled by the Celestial critics: one +of the gravest of the charges brought against it by these poll-shaved, +wooden-shod, little-foot-worshiping, Great-Wall-building mandarins of +literature being its extreme originality! They denounced Fihoti as +having sinned the unpardonable literary sin of writing a book, a large +share of whose ideas was nowhere to be found in the writings of +Confucius. + +But how strange such a charge would sound in our English ears! With us, +if between two authors the most remote resemblance of idea or expression +can be detected, straightway some ultraist stickler for +originality--some Poe--shrieks out, 'Some body must be a thief!' and +forthwith, all along the highways of reviewdom, is sent up the hue and +cry: 'Stop thief! stop thief!' For has not the law thundered from Sinai, +'Thou shalt not steal'? True, plagiarism is nowhere distinctly forbidden +by Moses; but have not critics judicially pronounced it author-_theft_? +Has not metaphor been sounded through every note of its key-board, to +strike out all that is base whereunto to liken it? Have not old Dr. +Johnson's seven-footed words--the tramp of whose heavy brogans has +echoed down the staircase of years even unto our day--declared +plagiarists from the works of buried writers 'jackals, battening on dead +men's thoughts'? + +And yet, after a vast deal of such like catachresis, the orthodoxy of +plagiarism remains still in dispute. What we incorporate among the +cardinal articles of literary faith, China abjures as a dangerous +heresy. But neither our own nor the Chinese creed consists wholly of +tested bullion, but is crude ore, in which the pure gold of truth is +mingled with the dross of error. That is a golden tenet of the +tea-growers which licenses the borrowing of ideas; that 'of the earth, +earthy,' which embargoes every one unborrowed. We build upon a rock when +interdicting plagiarism; but on sand when we make that term inclose +author-theft and author-borrowing. The making direct and unacknowledged +quotations, and palming them off as the quoter's, is a very grave +literary offense. But the expression of similar or even identical +thoughts in different language, in this age of the world must be +tolerated, or else the race of authors soon become as extinct as that of +behemoths and ichthyosauri; and, indeed, far from levying any imposts +upon author-borrowing, rather ought we to vote bounties and pensions to +encourage it. + +Originality of thought with men is impossible. There is in existence a +certain amount of thought, but it all belongs to God. Lord paramount +over the empire of mind as well as matter, he alone is seized, in fee +simple right, of the whole domain: provinces of which men hold, as +fiefs, by vassal tenure, subject to reversion and enfeoffment to +another. Nor can any man absolve himself from his allegiance, and extend +absolute sovereignty over broad tracts of idea-territory; for while +feudal princes vested in themselves, by conquest merely, the ownership +of kingdoms, God became suzerain over the empire of thought by virtue of +creation--for creation confers right of property. We do not, then, +originate the thoughts we call our own; or else Pantheism tells no lie +when it declares that man is God, for the differentia which +distinguishes God from man is absolute creative power. And if man be +thought-creative, he can as well as God give being unto what was +non-existent, and that, too, not mere gross, perishable matter, but +immortal soul; for thought is mind, and mind is spirit, soul, undying, +immortal. Grant that, and you divide God's empire, and enthrone the +creature in equal sovereignty beside his Maker. + +All thought, then, belongs exclusively to God, and is parceled out by +him, as he chooses, among his creature feudatories. As the wind, which +bloweth where it listeth, and no one knoweth whence it cometh, save that +it is sent by God, so is thought, as it blows through our minds. Over +birds, flying at liberty through the free air, boys often advance claims +of ownership more specific than are easily derived from the general +dominion God gave man over the beasts of the field and the birds of the +air; yet, 'All those birds are mine!' exclaims a youngster in +roundabout, with just as much reason as any man can claim, as +exclusively his own, the thoughts which are ever winging their way +through the firmament of mind. + +But considered apart from the relation we sustain to God, none of us are +original with respect to our fellow-men. Few, indeed, are the ideas we +derive by direct grant, or through nature, from our liege lord; but far +the greater share, by hooks or personal contact, we gather through our +fellow-men. Consciously, unconsciously, we all teach--we all learn from, +one another. Association does far more toward forming mind than natural +endowments. As not alone the soil whence it springs makes the oak, but +surrounding elements contribute. Seclude a human mind entirely from +hooks and men, and you may have a man with no ideas borrowed from his +fellows. Such a one, in Germany, once grew up from childhood to manhood +in close imprisonment, and poor Kasper Hauser proved--an idiot. It can +hardly be necessary to suggest the well-known fact, that the greatest +readers of men and books always possess the greatest minds. Such are, +besides, of the greatest service to mankind. For since God has so formed +us that we love to give as well as take, a great independent mind, +complete in itself and incapable of receiving from others, must always +stand somewhat apart from men; and even a great heart, when +conjoined--as it seldom is--with a great head, is rarely able to +drawbridge over the wide moat which intrenches it in solitary +loneliness. Originality ever links with it something of +uncongeniality--a feeling somewhat akin to the egotism of that one who, +when asked why he talked so much to himself, replied--for two reasons: +the one, that he liked to talk to a sensible man; the other, that he +liked to hear a sensible man talk. Divorcing itself from +fellow-sympathies, it broods over its own perfections, till, like +Narcissus, it falls in love with itself. And so, a highly original man +can rarely ever be a highly popular man or author. By the very +super-abundance of his excellencies, his usefulness is destroyed; just +as Tarpeia sank, buried beneath the presents of the Sabine soldiery. A +Man once appeared on earth, of perfect originality; and in him, to an +unbounded intellect was added boundless moral power. But men received +him not. They rejected his teachings; they smote him; they crucified +him. + +But though the right of eminent domain over ideas does and should inhere +in one superior to us, far different is the case with words. These +'incarnations of thought' are of man's device, and therefore his; and +style--the peculiar manner in which one uses words to express ideas--is +individually personal. Indeed, style has been defined the man himself; a +definition, so far as he is recognized only as a revealer of thought, +substantially correct. In an idea word-embodied, the embodier, then, +possesses with God concurrent ownership. The idea itself may be +borrowed, or it may be his so far as discovery gives title; but the +words, in their arrangement, are absolutely his. All ideas are like +mathematical truths: eternal and unchangeable in their essence, and +originate in nature; words like figures, of a fixed value, but of human +invention; and sentences are formulæ, embodying oftentimes the same +essential truth, but in shapes as various as their paternity. Words, in +sentences, should then be inviolate to their author. + +Nor is this to value words above ideas--the flesh above the spirit of +which it is but the incarnation. It is not the intrinsic value of each +that we here regard, but the value of the ownership one has in each. +'Deacon Giles and I,' said a poor man, 'own more cows than any five +other men in the county.' 'How many does Deacon Giles own?' asked a +bystander. 'Nineteen.' 'And how many do you?' 'One.' And that one cow, +which that poor man owned, was worth more to _him_ than the nineteen +which were Deacon Giles's. So, when you have determined whose the style +is which enfolds a thought, whose the thought is, is as little worth +dispute as, after its wrappage of corn has been shelled off, the cob's +ownership is worth a quarrel. + +As thoughts bodied in words uttered make up conversation, thought +incarnate in words written constitutes literature. The gross sum of +thought with which God has seen to dower the human mind, though vast, is +finite, and may be exhausted. Indeed, we are told this had been already +done so long ago as times whereof Holy Writ takes cognizance. Since that +time, then, men have been echoing and reëchoing the same old ideas. And +though words, too, are finite, their permutations are infinite. What +Himalayan piles of paper, river-coursed by Danubes and Niagaras of ink, +hath the 'itch of writing' aggregated! And yet, Ganganelli says that +every thing that man has ever written might be contained within six +thousand folio volumes, if filled with only original matter. But how +books lie heaped on one another, weighing down those under, weighed down +by those above them; each crushed and crushing; their thoughts, like +bones of skeletons corded in convent vault, mingled in confusion--like +those which Hawthorne tells us Miriam saw in the burial-cellar of the +Capuchin friars in Rome, where, when a dead brother had lain buried an +allotted period, his remains, removed from earth to make room for a +successor, were piled with those of others who had died before him. + +It is said Aurora once sought and gained from Jove the boon of +immortality for one she loved; but forgetting to request also perpetual +youth, Tithonus gradually grew old, his thin locks whitened, his wasting +frame dwindled to a shadow, and his feeble voice thinned down till it +became inaudible. And just so ideas, although immortal, were it not for +author-borrowers, through age grown obsolete, might virtually perish. +But by and by, just as some precious thought is being lost unto the +world, let there come some Medea, by whose potent sorcery that old and +withered idea receives new life-blood through its shrunken veins, and it +starts to life again with recreated vigor--another Æson, with the bloom +of youth upon him. Besides in this way playing the physician to save old +ideas from a burial alive, the author-borrower often delivers many a +prolific mother-thought of a whole family of children--as a prism from +out a parent ray of colorless light brings all the bright colors of the +spectrum, which, from red to violet, were all waiting there only for its +assistance to leap into existence; or sometimes he plays the parson, +wedlocking thoughts from whose union issue new; as from yellow wedded to +red springs orange, a new, a secondary life; or enacts, maybe, the +brood-hen's substitute. Many a thought is a Leda egg, imprisoning twin +life-principles, which,, incubated in the eccaleobion brain of an +author-borrower, have blessed the world; but without such a +foster-parent, in some neglected nest staled and addled, had never burst +the shell. + +Author-borrowing should also be encouraged, because it tends to +language's perfection, and thus to incrementing the value of the ideas +it vehicles; for though a gilding diction and elegant expression may not +directly increase a thought's intrinsic worth, yet by bestowing beauty +it increases its utility, and so adds relative value--just as a rosewood +veneering does to a basswood table. There may be as much raw timber in a +slab as in a bunch of shingles, but the latter is worth the most; it +will find a purchaser where the former would not. So there may be as +much truly valuable thought in a dull sermon as in a lively lecture; +but the lecture will please, and so instruct, where the dull sermon will +fall on an inattentive ear. Moreover, author minds are of two classes, +the one deep-thinking, the other word-adroit. Providence bestows her +favors frugally; and with the power of quarrying out huge lumps of +thought, ability to work them over into graceful form is rarely given. +This is no new doctrine, but a truth clearly recognized in metaphysics, +and evidenced in history. Cromwell was a prodigious thinker; but in +language, oh! how deficient. His thoughts, struggling to force +themselves out of that sphynx-like jargon which he spake and wrote, +appear like the treasures of the shipwrecked Trojans, swimming '_rari in +gurgite vasto_'--Palmyra columns, reared in the midst of a desert of +sentences. And Coleridge--than whom in the mines of mental science few +have dug deeper, and though Xerxes-hosts of word-slaves waited on his +pen--often wrote apparently mere bagatelle--the most transcendental +nonsense. Yet he who takes the pains to husk away his obscurity of style +will find solid ears of thought to recompense his labor. Bentham and +Kant required interpreters--Dumont and Cousin--to make understood what +was well worth understanding. These two kinds of +authors--thought-creditors and borrowing expressionists--are as mutually +necessary to each other to bring out idea in its most perfect shape, as +glass and mercury to mirror objects. Dim, indeed, is the reflection of +the glass without its coating of quicksilver; and amalgam, without a +plate on which to spread it, can never form a mirror. The metal and the +silex are + + 'Useless each without the other;' + +but wed them, and from their union spring life-like images of life. + +But it may be objected that in trying to improve a thought we often mar +it; just as in transplanting shrubs from the barren soil in which they +have become fast rooted, to one more fertile, we destroy them. 'Just as +the fabled lamps in the tomb of Terentia burned underground for ages, +but when removed into the light of day, went out in darkness.' That this +sometimes occurs, we own. Some ideas are as fragile as butterflies, whom +to handle is to destroy. But such are exceptions only, and should not +preclude attempts at improvement. If a bungler tries and fails, let him +be Anathema, Maranathema; but let not his failure deter from trial a +genuine artist. Nor is it an ignoble office to be thus shapers only of +great thinkers' thoughts--Python interpreters to oracles. Nor is his +work of slight account who thus--as sunbeams gift dark thunder-clouds +with 'silver lining' and a fringe of purple, as Time with ivy drapes a +rugged wall--hangs the beauties of expression round a rude but sterling +thought. Nay, oftentimes the shaper's labor is worth more than the +thought he shapes. For if the stock out of which the work is wrought be +ever more valuable than the workman's skill, then let canvas and +paint-pots impeach the fame of Raphael; rough blocks from Paros and +Pentelicus, the gold and ivory of the Olympian Jove; tear from the brow +of Phidias the laurel wreath with which the world has crowned him. +Supply of raw material is little without the ability to use it. Furnish +three men with stone and mortar, and while one is building an unsightly +heap of clumsy masonry, the architect will rear up a magnificent +cathedral--an Angelo, a St. Peter's. And so when ideas, which in their +crudeness are often as hard to be digested as unground corn, are run +through the mill of another's mind, and appear in a shape suited to +satisfy the most dyspeptic stomachs, does not the miller deserve a toll? + +Finally, author-borrowing has been hallowed by its practice, in their +first essays, by all our greatest writers. Turn to the scroll on which +the world has written the names of those it holds as most illustrious. +How was it with him whom English readers love to call the +'myriad-minded?' Shakespeare began by altering old plays, and his +indebtedness to history and old legends is by no means slight. How with +him who sang 'of man's first disobedience' and exodus from Eden? Even +Milton did not, Elijah-like, draw down his fire direct from heaven, but +kindled with brands, borrowed from Greek and Hebrew altars, the +inspiration which sent up the incense-poetry of a Lost Paradise. And all +the while that Maro sang 'Arms and the Man,' a refrain from the harp of +Homer was sounding in his ears, unto whose tones so piously he keyed and +measured his own notes, that oftentimes we fancy we can hear the strains +of 'rocky Scio's blind old bard' mingling in the Mantuan's melody. If +thus it has been with those who sit highest and fastest on +Parnassus--the crowned kings of mind--how has it been with the mere +nobility? What are Scott's poetic romances, but blossomings of engrafted +scions on that slender shoot from out the main trunk of English +poetry--the old border balladry? Campbell's polished elegance of style, +and the 'ivory mechanism of his verse,' was born the natural child of +Beattie and Pope. Byron had Gifford in his eye when he wrote 'English +Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' and Spenser when he penned the +'Pilgrimage.' Pope, despairing of originality, and taking Dryden for his +model, sought only to polish and to perfect. Gray borrowed from Spenser, +Spenser from Chaucer, Chaucer from Dante, and Dante had ne'er been Dante +but for the old Pagan mythology. Sterne and Hunt and Keats were only + + Bees, in their own volumes hiving + Borrowed sweets from others' gardens. + +And thus it ever is. The inceptions of true genius are always +essentially imitations. A great writer does not begin by ransacking for +the odd and new. He re-models--betters. Trusting not hypotheses +unproven, he demonstrates himself the proposition ere he wagers his +faith on the corollary; and it is thus that in time he grows to be a +discoverer, an inventor, an _originator_. + +Toward originality all should steer; but can only hope to reach it +through imitation. For if originality be the Colchis where the golden +fleece of immortality is won, imitation must be the Argo in which we +sail thither. + + + + +INTERVENTION. + + + Intervene! and see what you'll catch + In a powder-mill with a lighted match. + Intervene! if you think fit, + By jumping into the bottomless pit. + Intervene! How you'll gape and gaze + When you see all Europe in a blaze! + Russia gobbling your world half in, + Red Republicans settling with _sin_; + Satan broke loose and nothing between-- + _That's_ what you'll catch if you intervene! + + + + +MACCARONI AND CANVAS. + +VII. + + +'A REEL TITIANO FOR SAL.' + +There was a shop occupied by a dealer in paintings, engravings, +intaglios, old crockery, and _Bric-à-brac_-ery generally, down the Via +Condotti, and into this shop Mr. William Browne, of St. Louis, one +morning found his way. He had been induced to enter by reading in the +window, written on a piece of paper, + +'A REEL TITIANO FOR SAL,' + +and as he wisely surmised that the dealer intended to notify the English +that he had a painting by Titian for sale, he went in to see it. + +Unfortunately for Mr. Browne, familiarly known as Uncle Bill, he had one +of those faces that invariably induced Roman tradesmen to resort to the +Oriental mode of doing business, namely, charging three hundred per cent +profit; and as this dealer having formerly been a courier, +commissionaire and pander to English and American travelers, naturally +spoke a disgusting jargon of Italianized English, and had what he +believed were the most distinguished manners: _he_ charged five hundred +per cent. + +'I want,' said Uncle Bill to the 'brick-Bat' man, 'to see your Titian.' + +'I shall expose 'im to you in one moment, sare; you walk this way. He's +var' fine pickshoor, var' fine. You ben long time in Rome, sare?' + +No reply from Uncle Bill: his idea was, even a wise man may ask +questions, but none but fools answer fools. + +Brick-bat man finds that his customer has ascended the human scale one +step; he prepares 'to spring dodge' Number two on him. + +'Thare, sar, thare is Il Tiziano! I spose you say you see notheeng bote +large peas board: zat peas board was one táble for two, tree hundret +yars; all zat time ze pickshoor was unbeknounst undair ze táble. Zey +torn up ze table, and you see a none-doubted Tiziano. Var' fine +pickshoor!' + +'Do you know,' asked Uncle Bill, 'if it was in a temperance family all +that time?' + +'I am not acquent zat word, demprance--wot it means?' + +'Sober,' was the answer. + +'Yas, zat was in var' sobair fam'ly--in convent of nons.' + +'That will account for its being undiscovered so long--all the world +knows they are not inquisitive! If it had been in a drinking-house, some +body falling under the table would have seen it--wouldn't they?' + +Brick-bat reflects, and comes to the conclusion that the 'eldairly cove' +is wider-awake than he believed him, at first sight. + +'Now I torne zis board you see on ze othaire side, ze Bella Donna of +Tiziano. Zere is one in ze Sciarra palace, bote betwane you and I, I +don't believe it is gin'wine.' + +'I don't know much about paintings,' spoke Uncle Bill, 'but I know I've +seen seventy-six of these Belli Donners, and each one was sworn to as +the original picture!' + +'Var' true, sare, var' true, Tiziano Vermecellio was grate pantaire, man +of grate mind, and when he got holt onto fine subjick he work him ovair +and ovair feefty, seexty times. Ze chiaro-'scuro is var' fine, and ze +depfs of his tone somethings var' deep, vary. Look at ze flaish, sare, +you can pinch him, and, sare, you look here, I expose grand secret to +you. I take zis pensnife, I scratgis ze pant. Look zare!' + +'Well,' said Uncle Bill, 'I don't see any thing.' + +'You don't see anne theengs! Wot you see under ze pant?' + +'It looks like dirt.' + +'_Cospetto!_ zat is ze gr-and prep-par-ra-tion zat makes ze flaish of +Tiziano more natooral as life. You know grate pantaire, Mistaire Leaf, +as lives in ze Ripetta? Zat man has spend half his lifes scratging +Tiziano all to peases, for find out 'ow he mak's flaish: now he believes +he found out ze way, bote, betwane you and I----' Here the Brick-bat +man conveyed, by a shake of his head and a tremolo movement of his left +hand, the idea that 'it was all in vain.' + +'What do you ask for the picture?' asked Uncle Bill + +The head of the Brick-bat man actually disappeared between his shoulders +as he shrugged them up, and extended his hands at his sides like the +flappers of a turtle. Uncle Bill looked at the man in admiration; he had +never seen such a performance before, save by a certain contortionist in +a traveling circus, and in his delight he asked the man, when his head +appeared, if he wouldn't do that once more, only once more! + +In his surprise at being asked to perform the trick, he actually went +through it again. For which, Uncle Bill thanked him, kindly, and again +asked the price of the Titian. + +'I tak' seex t'ousand scudi for him, not one baiocch less.' + +'It an't dear,'specially for those who have the money to +scatterlophisticate,' replied Uncle Bill cheerfully. + +'No, sare, it ees dogs chip, var' chip. I have sevral Englis' want to +buy him bad; I shall sell him some days to some bodies. Bote, sare, will +you 'ave ze goodniss to write down on peas paper zat word, var' fine +word, you use him minit 'go--scatolofistico sometheengs--I wis' to larn +ze Englis' better as I spiks him.' + +'Certainly; give me a pencil and paper, I'll write it down, and you'll +astonish some Englishman with it, I'll bet a hat.' + +So it was written down; and if any one ever entered a shop in the +Condotti where there was a Titiano for Sal, and was 'astonished' by +hearing that word used, they may know whence it came. + +Mr. Browne, after carefully examining the usual yellow marble model of +the column of Trajan, the alabaster pyramid of Caius Cestius, the verd +antique obelisks, the bronze lamps, lizards, marble _tazze_, and +paste-gems of the modern-antique factories, the ever-present Beatrice +Cenci on canvas, and the water-color costumes of Italy, made a purchase +of a Roman mosaic paper-weight, wherein there was a green parrot with a +red tail and blue legs, let in with minute particles of composition +resembling stone, and left the Brick-bat man alone with his Titiano for +Sal. + + +SO LONG! + +Rocjean came into Caper's studio one morning, evidently having something +to communicate. + +'Are you busy this morning? If not, come along with me; there is +something to be seen--something that beats the Mahmoudy Canal of the +Past, or the Suez Canal of the Present, for wholesale slaughter; for I +do assure you, on the authority of Hassel, that nine hundred and +thirty-six million four hundred and sixty-one thousand people died +before it was finished!' + +'That must be a work worth looking at. Why, the Pyramids must be as +anthills to Chimborazo in comparison to it! Nine hundred and odd +millions of mortals! Why, that is about the number dying in a +generation--and these have passed away while it was being completed? It +ought to be a master-piece.' + +'Can't we get a glass of wine round here?' asked Rocjean, looking at his +watch; 'it is about luncheon-time, and I have a charming little thirst.' + +'Oh! yes, there is a wine-shop only three doors from here, pure Roman. +Let us go: we can stand out in the street and drink if you are afraid to +go in.' + +Leaving the studio, they walked a few steps to a house that was +literally all front-door; for the entrance was the entire width of the +building, and a buffalo-team could have passed in without let. Outside +stood a wine-cart, from which they were unloading several small casks +of wine. The driver's seat had a hood over it, protecting him from the +sun, as he lazily sleeps there, rumbling over the tufa road, to or from +the Campagna, and around the seat were painted in gay colors various +patterns of things unknown. In the autumn, vine-branches with pendent, +rustling leaves decorate hood and horse, while in spring or summer, a +bunch of flowers often ornaments this gay-looking wine-cart. + +The interior of the shop was dark, dingy, sombre, and dirty enough to +have thrown an old Flemish Interior artist into hysterics of delight. +There was an _olla podrida_ browniness about it that would have +entranced a native of Seville; and a collection of dirt around, that +would have elevated a Chippeway Indian to an ecstasy of delight. The +reed-mattings hung against the walls were of a gulden ochre-color, the +smoked walls and ceiling the shade of asphaltum and burnt sienna, the +unswept stone pavement a warm gray, the old tables and benches very rich +in tone and dirt; the back of the shop, even at midday, dark, and the +eye caught there glimpses of arches, barrels, earthen jars, tables and +benches resting in twilight, and only brought out in relief by the faint +light always burning in front of the shrine of the Virgin, that hung on +one of the walls. + +In a wine-shop this shrine does not seem out of place, it is artistic; +but in a lottery-office, open to the light of day, and glaringly +common-place, the Virgin hanging there looks much more like the goddess +Fortuna than Santa Maria. + +But they are inside the wine-shop, and the next instant a black-haired +gipsy-looking woman with flashing, black eyes, warming up the sombre +color of the shop by the fiery red and golden silk handkerchief which +falls from the back of her head, Neapolitan fashion, illuminating that +dusky old den like fireworks, asks them what they will order? + +'A foglietta of white wine.' + +'Sweet or dry?' she asks. + +'Dry,' (_asciùtto_,) said Rocjean. + +There it is on the table, in a glass flask, brittle as virtue, light as +sin, and fragile as folly. They are called Sixtusses, after that pious +old Sixtus V. who hanged a publican and wine-seller sinner in front of +his shop for blasphemously expressing his opinion as to the correctness +of charging four times as much to put the fluoric-acid government stamp +on them as the glass cost. However, taxes must be raised, and the +thinner the glass the easier it is broken, so the Papal government +compel the wine-sellers to buy these glass bubbles, forbidding the sale +of wine out of any thing else save the _bottiglie_; and as it raises +money by touching them up with acid, why, the people have to stand it. +These _fogliette_ have round bodies and long, broad necks, on which you +notice a white mark made with the before-mentioned chemical preparation; +up to this mark the wine should come, but the attendant generally takes +thumb-toll, especially in the restaurants where foreigners go, for the +Roman citizen is not to be swindled, and will have his rights: the +single expression, 'I AM A ROMAN CITIZEN,' will at times save him at +least two _baiocchi_, with which he can buy a cigar. There was a time +when these words would have checked the severest decrees of the highest +magistrate: now when they fire off 'that gun,' the French soldiers stand +at its mouth, laugh, and say; '_Boom!_ you have no balls for your +cartridges!' + +The wine finished, our two artists took up their line of march for the +object that had outlived so many millions on millions of human beings, +and at last reached it, discovering its abode afar off, by the crowd of +fair-and unfair, or red-haired Saxons, who were thronging up a staircase +of a house near the Ripetta, as if a steamboat were ringing her last +bell and the plank were being drawn in. + +'And pray, can you tell me, Mister Buller, if it's a positive fact that +the man has been so long as they say, at work on the thing?' + +'And ah! I haven't the slightest doubt of it, myself. I've been told +that he has worked on it, to be sure, for full thirty years; and I may +say I am delighted, that he has it done at last, and that it is to be +packed up and sent away to St. Petersburg next week. And how do you like +the Hotel Minerva? I think it's not a very dirty inn, but the waiters +are very demanding, and the fleas--' + +'I beg you won't speak of them, it makes my blood run cold. Have you +seen the last copy of _Galignani_? The Americans, I am glad to see, have +had trouble with us, and I hope they will be properly punished. Do you +know the Duke of Bigghed is in town?' + +'Really! and when did he come--and where is the Duchess? oh!--she's a +very amiable lady--but here's the picture!' + +Ushered in, or preceded by this rattle-headed talk, Caper and Rocjean +stood at last before Ivanhof's celebrated painting--finished at last! +Thirty years' work, and the result? + +A very unsatisfactory stream of water, a crowd of Orientals, and our +Saviour descending a hill. + +The general impression left on the mind after seeing it, was like that +produced by a wax-work show. Nature was travestied; ease, grace, +freedom, were wanting: evidently the thirty years might have been better +spent collecting beetles or dried grasses. + +Around the walls of the studio hung sketches painted during visits the +artist had made to the East. Here were studies of Eastern heads, +costumes, trees, soil by river-side, sand in the desert, copied with +scrupulous care and precise truth, yet, when they were all together in +the great painting, the combined effect was a failure. + +The artist, they said, had, during this long period, received an annual +pension of so many roubles from the Russian government, and had taken +his time about it. At last it was completed; the painting that had +outlasted a generation was to be sent to St. Petersburg to hibernate +after a lifetime spent in sunny Italy. Well! after all, it was better +worth the money paid for it than that paid for nine tenths of those +kingly toys in the baby-house Green Chambers of Dresden. _Le Roi +s'amuse!_ + +And the white-haired Saxons came in shoals to the studio to see the +painting with thirty years' labor on it, and accordingly as their +oracles had judged it, so did they: for behold! gay colors are tabooed +in the mythology of the Pokerites, and are classed with perfumes, +dance-music, and jollity, and art earns a precarious livelihood in their +land, where all knowledge of it is supposed to be tied up with the +enjoyers of primogeniture. + + +ROMAN THEATRES. + +The Apollo, where grand opera, sandwiched with moral ballets, is given +for the benefit of foreigners, principally, would be a fine house if you +could only see it; but when Caper was in Rome, the oil-lamps, showing +you where to sit down, did not reveal its proportions, or the dresses of +the box-beauties, to any advantage; and as oil-lamps will smoke, there +settled a veil over the theatre towards the second act, that draped +Comedy like Tragedy, and then set her to coughing. + +During Carnival a melancholy ball or two was given there: a few wild +foreigners venturing in masked, believed they had mistaken the house, +for although many women were wandering around in domino, they found the +Roman young men unmasked, walking about dressed in canes and those +dress-coats, familiarly known as tail-coats, which cause a man to look +like a swallow with the legs of a crane, and wearing on their impassive +faces the appearance of men waiting for an oyster-supper--or an +earthquake. + +The commissionaire at the hotel always recommends strangers to go to the +Apollo: 'I will git you lôge, sare, first tier--more noble, sare.' + +The Capranica Theatre is next in size and importance; it is beyond the +Pantheon, out of the foreign quarter of Rome, and you will find in it a +Roman audience--to a limited extent. Salvini acted there in _Othello_, +and filled the character admirably; it is needless to say that Iago +received even more applause than Othello; Italians know such men +profoundly--they are Figaros turned undertakers. Opera was given at the +Capranica when the Apollo was closed. + +The Valle is a small establishment, where Romans, pure blood, of the +middle class, and the nobility who did not hang on to foreigners, were +to be found. Giuseppina Gassier, who has since sung in America, was +prima-donna there, appearing generally in the _Sonnambula_. + +But the Capranica Theatre was the resort for the Roman _minenti_, decked +in all their bravery. Here came the shoemaker, the tailor, and the small +artisan, all with their wives or women, and with them the wealthy +peasant who had ten cents to pay for entrance. Here the audience wept +and laughed, applauded the actors, and talked to each other from one +side of the house to the other. Here the plays represented Roman life in +the rough, and were full of words and expressions not down in any +dictionary or phrase-book; nor in these local displays were forgotten +various Roman peculiarities of accentuation of words, and curious +intonations of voice. The Roman people indulge in chest-notes, leaving +head-notes to the Neapolitans, who certainly do not possess such +smoothness of tongue as would classify them among their brethren in the +old proverb: 'When the confusion of tongues happened at the building of +the Tower of Babel, if the Italian had been there, Nimrod would have +made him a plasterer!' + +You will do well, if you want to learn from the stage and audience, the +Roman _plebs_, their customs and language, to attend the Capranica +Theatre often; to attend it in 'fatigue-dress,' and in gentle mood, +being neither shocked nor astonished if a good-looking Roman youth +should call your attention to the fact that there is a beautiful girl in +the box to the left hand, and inquire if you know whether she is the +daughter of Santi Stefoni, the grocer? And should the man on the other +side offer you some pumpkin-seeds to eat, by all means accept a few; you +can't tell what they may bring forth, if you will only plant them +cheerfully. + +Do not think it strange if a doctor on the stage recommends conserve of +vipers to a consumptive patient; for these poisonous reptiles are caught +in large numbers in the mountains back of Rome, and sold to the city +apothecaries, who prepare large quantities of them for their customers. + +When you see, perhaps the hero of the play, thrown into a paroxysm of +anger and fiery wrath by some untoward event, proceed calmly to cut up +two lemons, squeeze into a tumbler their juice, and then drink it +down--learn that it is a common Roman remedy for anger. + +Or if, when a piece of crockery, or other fragile article, may be +broken, you notice one of the actors carefully counting the pieces, do +not think it is done in order to reconstruct the article, but to guide +him in the purchase of a lottery-ticket. + +When you notice that on one of his hands the second finger is twined +over the first, of the Rightful-heir in presence of the Wrongful-heir, +you may know that the first is guarding himself against the Evil Eye +supposed to belong to the second. + +And--the list could be extended to an indefinite length--you will learn +more, by going to the Capranica. + +At the Metastasio Theatre there was a French vaudeville company, +passably good, attended by a French audience, the majority officers and +soldiers. Here were presented such attractive plays as _La Femme qui +Mord_, or 'The Woman who Bites;' _Sullivan_, the hero of which gets +_bien gris_, very gray, that is, blue, that is, very tipsy, and at the +close, astonishes the audience with the moral: To get tight is human! +_Dalilah_, etc., etc. The French are not very well beloved by the Romans +pure and simple; it is not astonishing, therefore, that their language +should be laughed at. One morning Rome woke up to find placards all +over the city, headed: + + FRENCH + + TAUGHT IN THIRTY-SIX LESSONS! + + Apply to Monsieur SO-AND-SO. + +A few days afterward appeared a fearful wood-cut, the head of a jackass, +with his tongue hanging down several inches, and under it, these words, +in Italian: 'The only tongue yet learnt in less than thirty-six +lessons!' + +Caper, seated one night in the parquette of the Metastasio, had at his +side a French infantry soldier. In conversation he asked him: + +'How long have you been in Rome?' + +'Three years, _Mossu_.' + +'Wouldn't you like to return to France?' + +'Not at all.' + +'Why not?' + +'Wine is cheap, here, tobacco not dear, the ladies are extremely kind: +_voila tout!_' + +'You have all these in France.' + +'_Oui, Mossu!_ but when I return there I shall be a farmer again; and +it's a frightful fact that you may plow your heart out without turning +up but a very small quantity of these articles there!' + +French soldiers still protect Rome--and 'these articles there.' + + +THE BEARDS OF ART. + +'Can you tell me,' said Uncle Bill Browne to Rocjean, with the air of a +man about to ask a hard conundrum, 'why beards, long hair, and art, +always go together?' + +'Of course, art draws out beards along with talent; paints and bristles +must go together; but high-art drives the hair of the head in, and +clinches it. Among artists first and last there have been men with giant +minds, and they have known it was their duty to show their mental power: +the beard is the index.' + +'But the beard points downward,' suggested Caper, 'and not upward.' + +'That depends----' + +'On _pomade Hongroise_--or beeswax,' interrupted Caper. + +'Exactly; but let me answer Uncle Bill. To begin, we may safely assert +that an artist's life--here in Rome, for instance--is about as +independent a one as society will tolerate; its laws, as to shaving +especially, he ignores, and caring very little for the Rules of the +Toilette, as duly published by the--_bon ton_ journals, uses his razor +for mending lead-pencils, and permits his beard to enjoy long vacation +rambles. Again: those who first set the example of long beards, Leonardo +da Vinci, for example, who painted his own portrait with a full beard a +foot long, were men who moved from principle, and I have the belief that +were Leonardo alive to-day, he would say: + +"My son, and well-beloved Rocjean, _zitto!_ and let ME talk. Know, then, +that I did permit my beard luxuriant length--for a reason. Thou dost not +know, but I do, that among the ancient Egyptians they worshiped in their +deity the male and female principle combined; so the exponents of this +belief, the Egyptian priests, endeavored in their attire to show a +mingling of the male and female sex; they wore long garments like women, +_vergogna!_ they wore long hair, _guai!_ and they SHAVED THEIR FACES! It +pains me to say, that their indecent example is followed even to this +day, by the priests of what should be a purer and better religion. + +"_Silenzio!_ I have not yet said my say. Among Eastern nations, their +proverbs, and what is better, their customs, show a powerful protest +against this impure old faith. You have seen the flowing beards of the +Mohammedans, especially the Turks, and their short-shaved heads of hair, +and you may have heard of their words of wisdom: + +"'Long hair, little brain.' + +"And that eloquent sentence: + +"'Who has no beard has no authority.' + +"They have other sayings, which I can not approve of; for instance: + +"'Do not buy a red-haired person, do not sell one, either; if you have +any in the house, drive them away.' + +"I say I do not approve of this, for the majority of the English have +red heads, and people who want to buy my pictures I never would drive +out of my house, _mai!_" + +'Come,' said Caper, 'Leonardo no longer speaks when there is a question +of buying or selling. Assume the first person.' + +'Another excellent reason for artists in Rome to wear beards is, that +where their foreign names can not be pronounced, they are often called +by the size, color, or shape, of this face-drapery. This is particularly +the case in the Café Greco, where the waiters, who have to charge for +coffee, etc., when the artist does not happen to have the change about +him, are compelled to give him a name on their books, and in more than +one instance, I know that they are called from their beards, I have a +memorandum of these nicknames: I am called _Barbone_, or Big-bearded; +and you, Caper, are down as _Sbarbato Inglese_, the Shaved Englishman.' + +'Hm!' spoke Caper, 'I an't an Englishman, and I don't shave; my beard +has to come yet.' + +'What is my name?' asked Uncle Bill. + +'_Puga Sempre_, or He Pays Always. A countryman of mine is called _Baffi +Rici_, or Big Moustache; another one, _Barbetta_, Little Beard; another, +_Barbáccia_, Shabby Beard; another, _Barba Nera_, Black Beard; and, of +course, there is a _Barba Rossa_, or Red Beard. Some of the other names +are funny enough, and would by no means please their owners. There is +_Zoppo Francese_, the Lame Frenchman; _Scapiglione_, the Rowdy; +_Pappagallo_, the Parrot; _Milordo_; _Furioso_; and one friend of ours +is known, whenever he forgets to pay two baiocchi for his coffee, as +_San Pietro_!' + +'Well,' said Uncle Bill, 'I'll tell you why I thought you artists wore +long beards: that when you were hard up, and couldn't buy brushes, you +might have the material ready to make your own.' + +'You're wrong, Uncle,' remarked Caper; 'when we can't buy them, we get +trusted for them--that's our way of having a brush with the enemy.' + +'That will do, Jim, that will do; say no more. None of the artists' +beards here, can compare with one belonging to a buffalo-and-prairie +painter who lives out in St. Louis--it is so long he ties the ends +together and uses it for a boot-jack. Good-night, boys, good-night!' + + +A CALICO-PAINTER. + +Rocjean was finishing his after-dinnerical coffee and cigar, when +looking up from _Las Novedades_, containing the latest news from Madrid, +and in which he had just read _en Roma es donde hay mas mendigos_, Rome, +is where most beggars are found; London, where most engineers, lost +women, and rat-terriers, abound; Brussels, where women who smoke, are +all round--looking up from this interesting reading, he saw opposite him +a young man, whose acquaintance he knew at a glance, was worth making. +Refinement, common-sense, and energy were to be read plainly in his +face. When he left the café, Rocjean asked an artist, with long hair, +who was fast smoking himself to the color of the descendants of Ham, if +he knew the man?' + +'No-o-oo, I believe he's some kind of a calico-painter.' + +'What?' + +'Oh! a feller that makes designs for a calico-mill.' + +Not long afterward Rocjean was introduced to him, and found him, as +first impressions taught him he would--a man well worth knowing. Ho was +making a holiday-visit to Rome, his settled residence being in Paris, +where his occupation was designer of patterns for a large calico-mill in +the United States. A New-Yorker by birth, consequently more of a +cosmopolitan than the provincial life of our other American cities will +tolerate or can create in their children, Charles Gordon was every inch +a man, and a bitter foe to every liar and thief. He was well informed, +for he had, as a boy, been solidly instructed; he was polite, refined, +for he had been well educated. His life was a story often told: +mercantile parent, very wealthy; son sent to college; talent for art, +developed at the expense of trigonometry and morning-prayers; mercantile +parent fails, and falls from Fifth avenue to Brooklyn, preparatory to +embarking for the land of those who have failed and fallen--wherever +that is. Son wears long hair, and believes he looks like the painter who +was killed by a baker's daughter, writes trashy verses about a man who +was wronged, and went off and howled himself to a long repose, sick of +this vale of tears, et cetera. Finally, in the midst of his despair, +long hair, bad poetry and painting, an enterprising friend, who sees he +has an eye for color, its harmonies and contrasts, raises him with a +strong hand into the clear atmosphere of exertion for a useful and +definite end--makes him a 'calico-painter.' + +It was a great scandal for the Bohemians of art to find this +calico-painter received every where in refined and intelligent society, +while they, with all their airs, long hairs, and shares of impudence, +could not enter--they, the creators of Medoras, Magdalens, Our Ladies of +Lorette, Brigands' Brides, Madame not In, Captive Knights, Mandoline +Players, Grecian Mothers, Love in Repose, Love in Sadness, Moonlight on +the Waves, Last Tears, Resignation, Broken Lutes, Dutch Flutes, and +other mock-sentimental-titled paintings. + +'God save me from being a gazelle!' said the monkey. + +'God save us from being utility calico-painters!' cried the high-minded, +dirty cavaliers who were not cavaliers, as they once more rolled over in +their smoke-house. + +'In 1854,' said Gordon, one day, to Rocjean, after their acquaintance +had ripened into friendship, 'I was indeed in sad circumstances, and was +passing through a phase of life when bad tobacco, acting on an empty +stomach, gave me a glimpse of the Land of the Grumblers. One long year, +and all that was changed; then I woke up to reality and practical life +in a 'Calico-Mill;' then I wrote the lines you have asked me about. Take +them for what they are worth. + + +REDIVIVUS. + +MDCCCLVI + + 'He sat in a garret in Fifty-four, + To welcome Fifty-five. + 'God knows,' said he, 'if another year + Will find this man alive. + I was born for love, I live in song, + Yet loveless and songless I'm passing along, + And the world?--Hurrah! + Great soul, sing on! + + 'He sat in the dark, in Fifty-four, + To welcome Fifty-five. + 'God knows,' said he, 'if another year + I'll any better thrive. + I was born for light, I live in the sun, + Yet in, darkness, and sunless, I'm passing on, + And the world?--Hurrah! + Great soul, shine on!' + + 'He sat in the cold, in Fifty-four, + To welcome Fifty-five. + 'God knows,' said he, 'I'm fond of fire, + From warmth great joy derive. + I was born warm-hearted, and oh! it's wrong + For them all to coldly pass along: + And the world?--Hurrah! + Great soul, burn on!' + + 'He sat in a home, in Fifty-five, + To welcome Fifty-six. + 'Throw open the doors!' he cried aloud, + 'To all whom Fortune kicks! + I was born for love, I was born for song, + And great-hearted MEN my halls shall throng. + And the world?--Hurrah! + Great soul, sing on!' + + 'He sat in bright light, in Fifty-five, + To welcome Fifty-six. + 'More lights!' he cried out with joyous shout, + 'Night ne'er with day should mix. + I was born for light, I live in the sun, + In the joy of others my life's begun. + And the world?--Hurrah! + Great soul, shine on!' + + 'He sat in great warmth, in Fifty-five, + To welcome Fifty-six, + In a glad and merry company + Of brave, true-hearted Bricks! + 'I was born for warmth, I was born for love, + I've found them all, thank GOD above! + And the world?--Ah! bah! + Great soul, move on!'' + + +A PATRON OF ART. + +The Roman season was nearly over: travelers were making preparations to +fly out of one gate as the Malaria should enter by the other; for, +according to popular report, this fearful disease enters, the last day +of April, at midnight, and is in full possession of the city on the +first day of May. Rocjean, not having any fears of it, was preparing not +only to meet it, but to go out and spend the summer with it; it costs +something, however, to keep company with La Malaria, and our artist had +but little money: he must sell some paintings. Now it was unfortunate +for him that though a good painter, he was a bad salesman; he never kept +a list of all the arrivals of his wealthy countrymen or other strangers +who bought paintings; he never ran after them, laid them under +obligations with drinks, dinners, and drives; for he had neither the +inclination nor that capital which is so important for a +picture-merchant to possess in order to drive--a heavy trade, and +achieve success--such as it is. Rocjean had friends, and warm ones; so +that whenever they judged his finances were in an embarrassed state, +they voluntarily sent wealthy sensible as well as wealthy insensible +patrons of art to his aid, the latter going as Dutch galliots laden with +doubloons might go to the relief of a poor, graceful felucca, thrown on +her beam-ends by a squall. + +One morning there glowed in Rocjean's studio the portly forms of Mr. and +Mrs. Cyrus Shodd, together with the tall, fragile figure of Miss Tillie +Shodd, daughter and heiress apparent and transparent. Rocjean welcomed +them as he would have manna in the desert, for he judged by the air and +manner of the head of the family, that he was on picture-buying bent. He +even gayly smiled when Miss Shodd, pointing out to her father, with her +parasol, some beauty in a painting on the easel, run its point along the +canvas, causing a green streak from the top of a stone pine to extend +from the tree same miles into the distant mountains of the Abruzzi-the +paint was not dry! + +She made several hysterical shouts of horror after committing this +little act, and then seating herself in an arm-chair, proceeded to take +a mental inventory of the articles of furniture in the studio. + +Mr. Shodd explained to Rocjean that he was a plain man: + +This was apparent at sight. + +That he was an uneducated man: + +This asserted itself to the eyes and ears. + +After which self-denial, he commenced 'pumping' the artist on various +subjects, assuming an ignorance of things which, to a casual observer, +made him appear like a fool; to a thoughtful person, a knave: the whole +done in order, perhaps, to learn about some trifle which a plain, +straightforward question would have elicited at once. Rocjean saw his +man, and led him a fearful gallop in order to thoroughly examine his +action and style. + +Spite of his commercial life, Mr. Shodd had found time to 'self-educate' +himself--he meant self-instruct--and having a retentive memory, and a +not always strict regard for truth, was looked up to by the +humble-ignorant as a very columbiad in argument, the only fault to be +found with which gun was, that when it was drawn from its quiescent +state into action, its effective force was comparatively nothing, one +half the charge escaping through the large touch-hole of untruth. +Discipline was entirely wanting in Mr. Shodd's composition. A man who +undertakes to be his own teacher rarely punishes his scholar, rarely +checks him with rules and practice, or accustoms him to order and +subordination. Mr. Shodd, therefore, was--undisciplined: a raw recruit, +not a soldier. + +Of course, his conversation was all contradictory. In one breath, on the +self-abnegation principle, he would say, 'I don't know any thing about +paintings;' in the next breath, his overweening egotism would make him +loudly proclaim: 'There never was but one painter in this world, and +his name is Hockskins; he lives in my town, and he knows more than any +of your 'old masters'! _I_ ought to know!' Or, '_I_ am an uneducated +man,' meaning uninstructed; immediately following it with the assertion: +'All teachers, scholars, and colleges are useless folly, and all +education is worthless, except self-education.' + +Unfortunately, self-education is too often only education of self! + +After carefully examining all Rocjean's pictures, he settled his +attention on a sunset view over the Campagna, leaving Mrs. Shodd to talk +with our artist. You have seen--all have seen--more than one Mrs. Shodd; +by nature and innate refinement, ladies; (the 'Little Dorrits' Dickens +shows to his beloved countrymen, to prove to them that not all nobility +is nobly born--a very mild lesson, which they refuse to regard;) Mrs. +Shodds who, married to Mr. Shodds, pass a life of silent protest against +brutal words and boorish actions. With but few opportunities to add +acquirable graces to natural ease and self-possession, there was that in +her kindly tone of voice and gentle manner winning the heart of a +gentleman to respect her as he would his mother. It was her mission to +atone for her husband's sins, and she fulfilled her duty; more could not +be asked of her, for his sins were many. The daughter was a copy of the +father, in crinoline; taking to affectation--which is vulgarity in its +most offensive form--as a duck takes to water. Even her dress was +marked, not by that neatness which shows refinement, but by precision, +which in dress is vulgar. One glance, and you saw the woman who in +another age would have thrown her glove to the tiger for her lover to +pick up! + +Among Rocjean's paintings was the portrait of a very beautiful woman, +made by him years before, when he first became an artist, and long +before he had been induced to abandon portrait-painting for landscape. +It was never shown to studio-visitors, and was placed with its face +against the wall, behind other paintings. In moving one of these to +place it in a good light on the easel, it fell with the others to the +floor, face uppermost; and while Rocjean, with a painting in his hands, +could not stoop at once to replace it, Miss Shodd's sharp eyes +discovered the beautiful face, and, her curiosity being excited, nothing +would do but it must be placed on the easel. Unwilling to refuse a +request from the daughter of a Patron of Art in perspective, Rocjean +complied, and, when the portrait was placed, glancing toward Mrs. Shodd, +had the satisfaction of reading in her eyes true admiration for the +startlingly lovely face looking out so womanly from the canvas. + +'Hm!' said Shodd the father, 'quite a fancy head.' + +'Oh! it is an exact portrait of Julia Ting; if she had sat for her +likeness, it couldn't have been better. I must have the painting, pa, +for Julia's sake. I _must_. It's a naughty word, isn't it, Mr. Rocjean? +but it is so expressive!' + +'Unfortunately, the portrait is not for sale; I placed it on the easel +only in order not to refuse your request.' + +Mr. Shodd saw the road open to an argument. He was in ecstasy; a long +argument--an argument full of churlish flings and boorish slurs, which +he fondly believed passed for polished satire and keen irony. He did not +know Rocjean; he never could know a man like him; he never could learn +the truth that confidence will overpower strength; only at last, when +through his hide and bristles entered the flashing steel, did he, +tottering backwards, open his eyes to the fact that he had found his +master--that, too, in a poor devil of an artist. + +The landscapes were all thrown aside; Shodd must have that portrait. His +daughter had set her heart on having it, he said, and could a gentleman +refuse a lady any thing? + +'It is on this very account I refuse to part with it,' answered Rocjean. + +It instantly penetrated Shodd's head that all this refusal was only +design on the part of the artist, to obtain a higher price for the work +than he could otherwise hope for; and so, with what he believed was a +master-stroke of policy, he at once ceased importuning the artist, and +shortly departed from the studio, preceding his wife with his daughter +on his arm, leaving the consoler, and by all means his best half, to +atone, by a few kind words at parting with the artist, for her husband's +sins. + +'And there,' thought Rocjean, as the door closed, 'goes 'a patron of +art'--and by no means the worst pattern. I hope he will meet with +Chapin, and buy an Orphan and an Enterprise statue; once in his house, +they will prove to every observant man the owner's taste.' + +Mr. Shodd, having a point to gain, went about it with elephantine grace +and dexterity. The portrait he had seen at Rocjean's studio he was +determined to have. He invited the artist to dine with him--the artist +sent his regrets; to accompany him, 'with the ladies,' in his carriage +to Tivoli--the artist politely declined the invitation; to a +_conversazione_, the invitation from Mrs. Shodd--a previous engagement +prevented the artist's acceptance. + +Mr. Shodd changed his tactics. He discovered at his banker's one day a +keen, communicative, wiry, shrewd, etc., etc., enterprising, etc., 'made +a hundred thousand dollars' sort of a little man, named Briggs, who was +traveling in order to travel, and grumble. Mr. Shodd 'came the ignorant +game' over this Briggs; pumped him, without obtaining any information, +and finally turned the conversation on artists, denouncing the entire +body as a set of the keenest swindlers, and citing the instance of one +he knew who had a painting which he believed it would be impossible for +any man to buy, simply because the artist, knowing that he (Shodd) +wished it, would not set a price on it, so as to have a very high one +offered (!) Mr. Briggs instantly was deeply interested. Here was a +chance for him to display before Shodd of Shoddsville his shrewdness, +keenness, and so forth. He volunteered to buy the painting. + +In Rome, an artist's studio may be his castle, or it may be an Exchange. +To have it the first, you must affix a notice to your studio-door +announcing that all entrance of visitors to the studio is forbidden +except on, say, 'Monday from twelve A.M. to three P.M. This is the +baronial manner. But the artist who is not wealthy or has not made a +name, must keep an Exchange, and receive all visitors who choose to +come, at almost any hours--model hours excepted. So Briggs, learning +from Shodd, by careful cross-questioning, the artist's name, address, +and a description of the painting, walked there at once, introduced +himself to Rocjean, shook his hand as if it were the handle of a pump +upon which he had serious intentions, and then began examining the +paintings. He looked at them all, but there was no portrait. He asked +Rocjean if he painted portraits; he found out that he did not. Finally, +he told the artist that he had heard some one say--he did not remember +who--that he had seen a very pretty head in his studio, and asked +Rocjean if he would show it to him. + +'You have seen Mr. Shodd lately, I should think?' said the artist, +looking into the eyes of Mr. Briggs. + +A suggestion of a clean brick-bat passed under a sheet of yellow +tissue-paper was observable in the hard cheeks of Mr. Briggs, that being +the final remnant of all appearance of modesty left in the sharp man, in +the shape of a blush. + +'Oh! yes; every body knows Shodd--man of great talent--generous,' said +Briggs. + +'Mr. Shodd may be very well known,' remarked Rocjean measuredly, 'but +the portrait he saw is not well known; he and his family are the only +ones who have seen it. Perhaps it may save you trouble to know that the +portrait I have several times refused to sell him will never be sold +while I live. The _common_ opinion that an artist, like a Jew, will sell +the old clo' from his back for money, is erroneous.' + +Mr. Briggs shortly after this left the studio, slightly at a discount, +and as if he had been measured, as he said to himself; and then and +there determined to say nothing to Shodd about his failing in his +mission to the savage artist. But Shodd found it all out in the first +conversation he made with Briggs; and very bitter were his feelings when +he learnt that a poor devil of an artist dared possess any thing he +could not buy, and moreover had a quiet moral strength which the vulgar +man feared. In his anger, Shodd, with his disregard for truth, commenced +a fearful series of attacks against the artist, regaling every one he +dared to with the coarsest slanders, in the vilest language, against the +painter's character. A very few days sufficed to circulate them, so that +they reached Rocjean's ears; a very few minutes passed before the artist +presented himself to the eyes of Shodd, and, fortunately finding him +alone, told him in four words, 'You are a slanderer;' mentioning to him, +beside, that if he ever uttered another slander against his name, he +should compel him to give him instantaneous satisfaction, and that, as +an American, Shodd knew what that meant. + +It is needless to say that a liar and slanderer is a coward; +consequently Mr. Shodd, with the consequences before his eyes, never +again alluded to Rocjean, and shortly left the city for Naples, to +bestow the light of his countenance there in his great character of Art +Patron. + + * * * * * + +'It is a heart-touching face,' said Caper, as one morning, while hauling +over his paintings, Rocjean brought the portrait to light which the +cunning Shodd had so longed to possess for cupidity's sake. + +'I should feel as if I had thrown Psyche to the Gnomes to be torn to +pieces, if I had given such a face to Shodd. If I had sold it to him, I +should have been degraded; for the women loved by man should be kept +sacred in memory. She was a girl I knew in Prague, and, I think, with +six or eight exceptions, the loveliest one I ever met. Some night, at +sunset, I shall walk over the old bridge, and meet her as we parted; +_apropos_ of which meeting, I once wrote some words. Hand me that +portfolio, will you? Thank you. Oh! yes; here they are. Now, read them, +Caper; out with them! + + +ANEZKA OD PRAHA. + + Years, weary years, since on the Moldau bridge, + By the five stars and cross of Nepomuk, + I kissed the scarlet sunset from her lips: + Anezka, fair Bohemian, thou wert there! + + Dark waves beneath the bridge were running fast, + In haste to bathe the shining rocks, whence rose + Tier over tier, the gloaming domes and spires, + Turrets and minarets of the Holy City, + Its crown the Hradschin of Bohemia's kings. + O'er Wysscherad we saw the great stars shine; + We felt the night-wind on the rushing stream; + We drank the air as if 'twere Melnick wine, + And every draught whirled us still nearer Nebe: + Anezka, fair Bohemian, thou wert there! + + Why ever gleam thy black eyes sadly on me? + Why ever rings thy sweet voice in my ear? + Why looks thy pale face from the drifting foam-- + Dashed by the wild sea on this distant shore-- + Or from the white clouds does it beckon me? + + My own heart answers: On the Moldau bridge, + Anezka, we will meet to part no more. + + + + +ANTHONY TROLLOPE ON AMERICA. + + +Mr. Anthony Trollope's work entitled _North-America_ has been +republished in this country, and curiosity has at length been satisfied. +Great as has been this curiosity among his friends, it can not, however, +be said to have been wide-spread, inasmuch as up to the appearance of +this book of travels, comparatively few were aware of the presence of +Mr. Trollope in this country. When Charles Dickens visited America, our +people testified their admiration of his homely genius by going mad, +receiving him with frantic acclamations of delight, dining him, and +suppering him, and going through the 'pump-handle movement' with him. +Mr. Dickens was, in consequence, intensely bored by this attestation of +popular idolatry so peculiar to the United States, and looked upon us as +officious, absurd, and disgusting. Officious we were, and absurd enough, +surely, but far from being disgusting. He ought hardly to beget disgust +whose youth and inexperience leads him to extravagance in his kindly +demonstrations toward genius. However, Mr. Dickens went home rather more +impressed by our faults, which he had had every opportunity of +inspecting, than by our virtues, which possessed fewer salient features +to his humorous eye. Two books--_American Notes_ and _Martin +Chuzzlewit_--were the product of his tour through America. Thereupon, +the American people grew very indignant. Their Dickens-love, in +proportion to its intensity, turned to Dickens-hate, and ingratitude was +considered to be synonymous with the name of this novelist. We gave him +every chance to see our follies, and we snubbed his cherished and chief +object in visiting America, concerning a copyright. There is little +wonder, then, that Dickens, an Englishman and a caricaturist, should +have painted us in the colors that he did. There is scarcely less wonder +that Americans, at that time, all in the white-heat of enthusiasm, +should have waxed angry at Dickens' cold return to so much warmth. But, +reading these books in the light of 1862, there are few of us who do not +smile at the rage of our elders. We see an uproariously funny +extravaganza in _Martin Chuzzlewit_, which we can well afford to laugh +at, having grown thicker-skinned, and wonder what there is to be found +in the _Notes_ so very abominable to an American. Mr. Dickens was a +humorist, not a statesman or philosopher, therefore he wrote of us as a +disappointed humorist would have been tempted to write. + +It is not likely that Mr. Trollope's advent in this country would have +given rise to any remark or excitement, his novels, clever though they +be, not having taken hold of the people's heart as did those of Dickens. +He came among us quietly; the newspapers gave him no flourish of +trumpets; he traveled about unknown; hence it was, that few knew a new +book was to be written upon America by one bearing a name not +over-popular thirty years ago. Curiosity was confined to the friends and +acquaintances of Mr. Trollope, who were naturally not a little anxious +that he should conscientiously write such a book as would remove the +existing prejudice to the name of Trollope, and render him personally as +popular as his novels. For there are, we believe, few intelligent +Americans (and Mr. Trollope is good enough to say that we of the North +are all intelligent) who are not ready to '_faire l'aimable_' to the +kindly, genial author of _North-America_. It is not being rash to state +that Mr. Trollope, in his last book, has not disappointed his warmest +personal friends in this country, and this is saying much, when it is +considered that many of them are radically opposed to him in many of +his opinions, and most of them hold very different views from him in +regard to the present war. They are not disappointed, because Mr. +Trollope has _labored_ to be impartial in his criticisms. He has, at +least, _endeavored_ to lay aside his English prejudices and judge us in +a spirit of truth and good-fellowship. Mr. Trollope inaugurated a new +era in British book-making upon America, when he wrote: 'If I could in +any small degree add to the good feeling which should exist between two +nations which ought to love each other so well, and which do hang upon +each other so constantly, I should think that I had cause to be proud of +my work.' In saying this much, Mr. Trollope has said what others of his +ilk--Bulwer, Thackeray, and Dickens--would _not_ have said, and he may +well be proud, or, at least, he can afford _not_ to be proud, of a +superior honesty and frankness. He has won for himself kind thoughts on +this side of the Atlantic, and were Americans convinced that the body +English were imbued with the spirit of Mr. Trollope, there would be +little left of the resuscitated 'soreness.' + +In his introduction, Mr. Trollope frankly acknowledges that 'it is very +hard to write about any country a book that does not represent the +country described in a more or less ridiculous point of view.' He +confesses that he is not a philosophico-political or +politico-statistical or a statistico-scientific writer, and hence, +'ridicule and censure run glibly from the pen, and form themselves into +sharp paragraphs, which are pleasant to the reader. Whereas, eulogy is +commonly dull, and too frequently sounds as though it were false.' We +agree with him, that 'there is much difficulty in expressing a verdict +which is intended to be favorable, but which, though favorable, shall +not be falsely eulogistic, and though true, not offensive.' Mr. Trollope +has not been offensive either in his praise or dispraise; and when we +look upon him in the light in which he paints himself--that of an +English novelist--he has, at least, done his best by us. We could not +expect from him such a book as Emerson wrote on _English Traits_, or +such an one as Thomas Buckle would have written had death not staid his +great work of _Civilization_. Nor could we look to him for that which +John Stuart Mill--the English De Tocqueville--alone can give. For much +that we expected we have received, for that which is wanting we shall +now find fault, but good-naturedly, we hope. + +Our first ground of complaint against Mr. Trollope's _North-America_, is +its extreme verbosity. Had it been condensed to one half, or at least +one third of its present size, the spirit of the book had been less +weakened, and the taste of the public better satisfied. The question +naturally arises in an inquiring mind, if the author could make so much +out of a six months' tour through the Northern States, what would the +consequences have been had he remained a year, and visited Dixie's land +as well? The conclusions logically arrived at are, to say the least, +very unfavorable to weak-eyed persons who are condemned to read the +cheap American edition. Life is too short, and books are too numerous, +to allow of repetition; and at no time is Mr. Trollope so guilty in this +respect as when he dilates upon those worthies, Mason and Slidell, in +connection with the Trent affair. It was very natural, especially as +England has come off first-best in this matter, that Mr. Trollope should +have made a feature of the Trent in reporting the state of the American +pulse thereon. One reference to the controversy was desirable, two +endurable, but the third return to the charge is likely to meet with +impatient exclamations from the reader, who heartily sympathizes with +the author when he says: 'And now, I trust, I may finish my book without +again naming Messrs. Slidell and Mason.' + +It certainly was rash to rave as we did on this subject, but it was +quite natural, when our jurists, (even the Hon. Caleb Cushing) who were +supposed to know their business, assured us that we had right on our +side. It was extremely ridiculous to put Captain Wilkes upon a pedestal +a little lower than Bunker-Hill monument, and present him with a hero's +sword for doing what was then considered _only_ his duty. But it must be +remembered that at that time the mere performance of duty by a public +officer was so extraordinary a phenomenon that loyal people were brought +to believe it merited especial recognition. Our Government, and not the +people, were to blame. Had the speech of Charles Sumner, delivered on +his 'field-day,' been the verdict of the Washington Cabinet _previous_ +to the reception of England's expostulations, the position taken by +America on this subject would have been highly dignified and honorable. +As it is, we stand with feathers ruffled and torn. But if, as we +suppose, the Trent imbroglio leads to a purification of maritime law, +not only America, but the entire commercial world will be greatly +indebted to the super-patriotism of Captain Wilkes. + +'The charming women of Boston' are inclined to quarrel with their friend +Mr. Trollope, for ridiculing their powers of argumentation _apropos_ to +Captain Wilkes, for Mr. Trollope must confess they knew quite as much +about what they were talking as the lawyers by whom they were +instructed. They have had more than their proper share of revenge, +however, meted out for them by the reviewer of the London _Critic_, who +writes as follows: + + 'Mr. Trollope was in Boston when the first news about the Trent + arrived. Of course, every body was full of the subject at once--Mr. + Trollope, we presume, not excluded--albeit he is rather sarcastic + upon the young ladies who began immediately to chatter about it. + 'Wheaton is quite clear about it,' said one young girl to me. It + was the first I had heard of Wheaton, and so far was obliged to + knock under.' Yet Mr. Trollope, knowing very little more of Wheaton + than he did before, and obviously nothing of the great authorities + on maritime law, inflicts upon his readers page after page of + argument upon the Trent affair, not half so delightful as the + pretty babble of the ball-room belle. With all due respect to Mr. + Trollope, and his attractions, we are quite sure that we would much + sooner get our international law from the lips of the fair + Bostonian than from _his_.' + +After such a champion as this, could the fair Bostonians have the heart +to assail Mr. Trollope? + +Mr. Trollope treats of our civil war at great length; in fact, the +reverberations of himself on this matter are quite as objectionable as +those in the Trent affair. But it is his treatment of this subject that +must ever be a source of regret to the earnest thinkers who are +gradually becoming the masters of our Government's policy, who +constitute the bone and muscle of the land, the rank and file of the +army, and who are changing the original character of the war into that +of a holy crusade. It is to be deplored, because Mr. Trollope's book +will no doubt influence English opinion, to a certain extent, and +therefore militate against us, and we already know how his mistaken +opinions have been seized upon by pro-slavery journals in this country +as a _bonne bouche_ which they rarely obtain from so respectable a +source; the more palatable to them, coming from that nationality which +we have always been taught to believe was more abolition in its creed +than William Lloyd Garrison himself, and from whose people we have +received most of our lectures on the sin of slavery. It is sad that so +fine a nature as that of Mr. Trollope should not feel +conscience-stricken in believing that 'to mix up the question of general +abolition with this war must be the work of a man too ignorant to +understand the real subject of the war, or too false to his country to +regard it.' Yet it is strange that these 'too ignorant' or 'too false' +men are the very ones that Mr. Trollope holds up to admiration, and +declares that any nation might be proud to claim their genius. +Longfellow and Lowell, Emerson and Motley, to whom we could add almost +all the well-known thinkers of the country, men after his own heart in +most things, belong to this 'ignorant' or 'false' sect. Is it their one +madness? That is a strange madness which besets our _greatest_ men and +women; a marvelous anomaly surely. Yet there must be something +sympathetic in abolitionism to Mr. Trollope, for he prefers Boston, the +centre of this ignorance, to all other American cities, and finds his +friends for the most part among these false ones, by which we are to +conclude that Mr. Trollope is by nature an abolitionist, but that +circumstances have been unfavorable to his proper development. And these +circumstances we ascribe to a hasty and superficial visit to the British +West-India colonies. + +It is well known that in his entertaining book on travels in the +West-Indies and Spanish Main, Mr. Trollope undertakes to prove that +emancipation has both ruined the commercial prosperity of the British +islands and degraded the free blacks to a level with the idle brute. Mr. +Trollope is still firm in this opinion, notwithstanding the statistics +of the Blue Book, which prove that these colonies never were in so +flourishing a condition as at present. We, in America, have also had the +same fact demonstrated by figures, in that very plainly written book +called the _Ordeal of Free Labor_. Mr. Trollope, no doubt, saw some very +lazy negroes, wallowing in dirt, and living only for the day, but later +developments have proved that his investigations could have been simply +those of a dilettante. It is highly probable that the planters who have +been shorn of their riches by the edict of Emancipation, should paint +the present condition of the blacks in any thing but rose-colors, and +we, of course, believe that Mr. Trollope _believes_ what he has written. +He is none the less mistaken, if we are to pin our faith to the Blue +Book, which we are told never lies. And yet, believing that emancipation +has made a greater brute than ever of the negro, Mr. Trollope rejoices +in the course which has been pursued by the home government. If both +white man and black man are worse off than they were before, what good +could have been derived from the reform, and by what right ought he to +rejoice? Mr. Trollope claims to be an anti-slavery man, but we must +confess that to our way of arguing, the ground he stands upon in this +matter is any thing but _terra firma_. Mr. Trollope was probably +thinking of those dirty West-India negroes when he made the following +comments upon a lecture delivered by Wendell Phillips: + + 'I have sometimes thought that there is no being so venomous, so + bloodthirsty, as a professed philanthropist; and that when the + philanthropist's ardor lies negro-ward, it then assumes the deepest + die of venom and bloodthirstiness. There are four millions of + slaves in the Southern States, none of whom have any capacity for + self-maintenance or self-control. Four millions of slaves, with the + necessities of children, with the passions of men, and the + ignorance of savages! And Mr. Phillips would emancipate these at a + blow; would, were it possible for him to do so, set them loose upon + the soil to tear their masters, destroy each other, and make such a + hell upon earth as has never even yet come from the uncontrolled + passions and unsatisfied wants of men.' + +Mr. Trollope should have thought twice before he wrote thus of the +American negro. Were he a competent authority on this subject, his +opinion might be worth something; but as he never traveled in the South, +and as his knowledge of the negro is limited to a surface acquaintance +with the West-Indies, we maintain that Mr. Trollope has not only been +unjust, but ungenerous. Four millions of slaves, none of whom have any +capacity for self-maintenance or self-control! Whom are we to believe? +Mr. Trollope, who has never been on a Southern plantation, or Frederick +Law Olmsted? Mr. Pierce, who has been superintendent of the contrabands +at Fortress Monroe and at Hilton Head, officers attached to Burnside's +Division, and last and best, General David Hunter, an officer of the +regular army, who went to South-Carolina with anti-abolition +antecedents? All honor to General Hunter, who, unlike many others, has +not shut his eyes upon facts, and, like a rational being, has yielded to +the logic of events. It is strange that these authorities, all of whom +possess the confidence of the Government, should disagree with Mr. +Trollope. _None_ self-maintaining? Robert Small is a pure negro. Is he +not more than self-maintaining? Has he not done more for the Federal +Government than any white man of the Gulf States? Tillman is a negro; +the best pilots of the South are negroes: are _they_ not +self-maintaining? Kansas has welcomed thousands of fugitive slaves to +her hospitable doors, not as paupers, but as laborers, who have taken +the place of those white men who have gone to fight the battles which +they also should be allowed to take part in. The women have been gladly +accepted as house-servants. Does not this look like self-maintenance? +Would negroes be employed in the army if they were as Mr. Trollope +pictures them? He confesses that without these four millions of slaves +the South would be a wilderness, therefore they _do_ work as slaves to +the music of the slave-drivers' whip. How very odd, that the moment men +and women (for Mr. Trollope does acknowledge them to be such) _own +themselves_, and are paid for the sweat of their brow, they should +forget the trades by which they have enriched the South, and become +incapable of maintaining themselves--they who have maintained three +hundred and fifty thousand insolent slave-owners! Given whip-lashes and +the incubus of a white family, the slave _will_ work; given freedom and +wages, the negro _won't_ work. Was there ever stated a more palpable +fallacy? Is it necessary to declare further that the Hilton Head +experiment is a success, although the negroes, wanting in slave-drivers +and in their musical instruments, began their planting very late in the +season? Is it necessary to give Mr. Trollope one of many figures, and +prove that in the British West-India colonies free labor has exported +two hundred and sixty-five millions pounds of sugar annually, whereas +slave labor only exported one hundred and eighty-seven millions three +hundred thousand? And this in a climate where, unlike even the Southern +States of North-America, there is every inducement to indolence. + +Four millions of slaves, _none_ of whom are capable of self-control, who +possess the necessities of children, the passions of men, and the +ignorance of savages! We really have thought that the many thousands of +these four millions who have come under the Federal jurisdiction, +exercised considerable self-control, when it is remembered that in some +localities they have been left entire masters of themselves, have in +other instances labored months for the Government under promise of pay, +and have had that pay prove a delusion. Certainly it is fair to judge of +a whole by a part. Given a bone, Professor Agassiz can draw the animal +of which the bone forms a part. Given many thousands of negroes, we +should be able to judge somewhat of four millions. Had Mr. Trollope seen +the thousands of octoroons and quadroons enslaved in the South by their +_own fathers_, it would have been more just in him to have attributed a +want of _self-control_ to the _masters_ of these four millions. We do +not know what Mr. Trollope means by 'the necessities of children. +Children need to be sheltered, fed, and clothed, and so do the negroes, +but here the resemblance ends; for whereas children can not take care of +themselves, the negro _can_, provided there is any opportunity to work. +It is scarcely to be doubted that temporary distress must arise among +fugitives in localities where labor is not plenty; but does this +establish the black man's incapacity? Revolutions, especially those +which are internal, generally bring in their train distress to laborers. +Then we are told that the slaves are endowed with the passions of men; +and very glad are we to know this, for, as a love of liberty and a +willingness to sacrifice all things for freedom, is one of the loftiest +passions in men, were he devoid of this passion, we should look with +much less confidence to assistance from the negro in this war of freedom +_versus_ slavery, than we do at present. In stating that the slaves are +as ignorant as savages, Mr. Trollope pays an exceedingly poor compliment +to the Southern whites, as it would naturally be supposed that constant +contact with a superior race would have civilized the negro to a +_certain_ extent, especially as he is known to be wonderfully imitative. +And such is the case; at least the writer of these lines, who has been +born and bred in a slave State, thinks so. As a whole, they compare very +favorably with the 'poor white trash,' and individually they are vastly +superior to this 'trash.' It is true, that they can not read or write, +not from want of aptitude or desire, as the teachers among the +contrabands write that their desire to read amounts to a passion, in +many cases, even among the hoary-headed, but because the teaching of a +slave to read or write was, in the good old times before the war, +regarded and punished as a criminal offense. What a pity it is that we +can not go back to the Union _as it was!_ In this ignorance of the +rudiments of learning, the negroes are not unlike a large percentage of +the populations of Great Britain and Ireland. + +'And Mr. Phillips would let these ignorant savages loose upon the soil +to tear their masters, destroy each other, and make such a hell upon +earth as has never even yet come from the uncontrolled passions and +unsatisfied wants of men!' If Mr. Trollope were read in the history of +emancipation, he would know that there has not been an instance of 'such +a hell upon earth' as he describes. The American negro is a singularly +docile, affectionate, and good-natured creature, not at all given to +destroying his kind or tearing his master, and the least inclined to do +these things at a time when there is no necessity for them. A slave is +likely to kill his master to gain his freedom, but he is not fond enough +of murder to kill him when no object is to be gained except a halter. +The record so far proves that the masters have shot down their slaves +rather than have them fall into the hands of the Union troops. Even +granting Mr. Trollope's theory of the negro disposition, no edict of +emancipation could produce such an effect as he predicts, to the +_masters_, at least. They, in revenge, might shoot down their slaves, +but, unfortunately, the victims would be unable to defend themselves, +from the fact that all arms are sedulously kept from them. The slaves +would run away in greater numbers than they do at present, would give us +valuable information of the enemy, and would swell our ranks as +soldiers, if permitted, and kill their rebel masters in the legal and +honorable way of war. It is likely that Mr. Trollope, holding the black +man in so little estimation, would doubt his abilities in this capacity. +Fortunately for us, we can quote as evidence in our favor from General +Hunter's late letter to Congress, which, for sagacity and elegant +sarcasm, is unrivaled among American state papers. General Hunter, after +stating that the 'loyal slaves, unlike their fugitive masters, welcome +him, aid him, and supply him with food, labor, and information, working +with remarkable industry,' concludes by stating that 'the experiment of +arming the blacks, so far as I have made it, has been a complete and +even marvelous success. They are sober, docile, attentive, and +enthusiastic, _displaying great natural capacity for acquiring the +duties of the soldier_. They are eager beyond all things to take the +field and be led into action, and it is the _unanimous opinion_ of the +officers who have had charge of them, that in the peculiarities of this +climate and country, they will prove invaluable auxiliaries, fully equal +to the similar regiments so long and successfully used by the British +authorities in the West-India Islands. In conclusion, I would say that +it is my hope, there appearing no possibility of other reinforcements, +owing to the exigencies of the campaign on the peninsula, to have +organized by the end of next fall, and to be able to present to the +Government, from forty-eight to fifty thousand of these hardy and +devoted soldiers.' + +Mr. Trollope declares that without the slaves the South would be a +wilderness; he also says that the North is justified in the present war +against the South, and although he doubts our ability to attain our ends +in this war, he would be very glad if we were victorious. If these are +his opinions, and if further, he considers slavery to be the cause of +the war, then why in the name of common-sense does he not advocate that +which would bring about our lasting success? He expresses his +satisfaction at the probability of emancipation in Missouri, Kentucky, +and Virginia, and yet rather than that abolition should triumph +universally, he would have the Gulf States go off by themselves and sink +into worse than South-American insignificance, a curse to themselves +from the very reason of slavery. This, to our way of thinking, is vastly +more cruel to the South than even the 'hell upon earth,' which, +supposing it were possible, emancipation would create. A massacre could +affect but one generation: such a state of things as Mr. Trollope +expects to see would poison numberless generations. The Northern brain +is gradually ridding itself of mental fog, begotten by Southern +influences, and Mr. Trollope will not live to see the Gulf States sink +into a moral Dismal Swamp. The day is not far distant when a God-fearing +and justice-loving people will give these States their choice between +Emancipation and death in their 'last ditch,' which we suppose to be the +Gulf of Mexico. Repulses before Richmond only hasten this end. 'But +Congress can not do this,' says Mr. Trollope. Has martial law no virtue? +We object to the title, 'An Apology for the War,' which Mr. Trollope has +given to one of his chapters; and with the best of motives, he takes +great pains to prove to the English public how we of the North could not +but fight the South, however losing a game it might be. No true American +need beg pardon of Europe for this war, which is the only apology we can +make to civilization for slavery. Mr. Trollope states the worn-out cant +that the secessionists of the South have been aided and abetted by the +fanatical abolitionism of the North. Of course they have: had there been +no slavery, there would have been no abolitionists, and therefore no +secessionists. Wherever there is a wrong, there are always persons +fanatical enough to cry out against that wrong. In time, the few +fanatics become the majority, and conquer the wrong, to the infinite +disgust of the easy-going present, but to the gratitude of a better +future. The Abolitionists gave birth to the Republican party, and of +course the triumph of the Republican party was the father to secession; +but we see no reason to mourn that it was so; rather do we thank God +that the struggle has come in our day. We can not sympathize with Mr. +Trollope when he says of the Bell and Everett party: 'Their express +theory was this: that the question of slavery should not be touched. +Their purpose was to crush agitation, and restore harmony by an +impartial balance between the North and South: a fine purpose--the +finest of all purposes, had it been practicable.' We suppose by this, +that Mr. Trollope wishes such a state of things had been practicable. +The impartial balance means the Crittenden Compromise, whose +impartiality the North fails to see in any other light than a fond +leaning to the South, giving it all territory South of a certain +latitude, a _latitude_ that never was intended by the Constitution. It +seems to us that there can be no impartial balance between freedom and +slavery. Every jury must be partial to the right, or they sin before +God. + +Mr. Trollope tells us that 'the South is seceding from the North because +the two are not homogeneous. They have different instincts, different +appetites, different morals, and a different culture. It is well for one +man to say that slavery has caused the separation, and for another to +say that slavery has not caused it. Each in so saying speaks the truth. +Slavery has caused it, seeing that slavery is the great point on which +the two have agreed to differ. But slavery has not caused it, seeing +that other points of difference are to be found In every circumstance +and feature of the two people. The North and the South must ever be +dissimilar. In the North, labor will always be honorable, and because +honorable, successful. In the South, labor has ever been servile--at +least in some sense--and therefore dishonorable; and because +dishonorable, has not, to itself, been successful.' Is not this arguing +in a circle? The North is dissimilar to the South. Why? Because labor is +honorable in the former, and dishonorable, because of its servility, in +the latter. The servility removed, in what are the two dissimilar? One +third of the Southern whites are related by marriage to the North; a +second third are Northerners, and it is this last third that are most +violent in their acts against and hatred of the North. They were born +with our instincts and appetites, educated in the same morals, and +received the same culture; and these men are no worse than some of their +brothers who, though they have not emigrated to the South, have yet +fattened upon cotton. The parents of Jefferson Davis belonged to +Connecticut; Slidell is a New-Yorker; Benjamin is a Northerner; General +Lovell is a disgrace to Massachusetts; so, too, is Albert Pike. It is +utter nonsense to say that we are two people. Two interests have been at +work--free labor and slave labor; and when the former triumphs, there +will be no more straws split about two people, nor will the refrain of +agriculture _versus_ manufacture be sung. The South, especially +Virginia, has untold wealth to be drained from her great water-power. +New-England will not be alone in manufacturing, nor Pennsylvania in +mining. + +We think that Mr. Trollope fails to appreciate principle when he likens +the conflict between the two sections of our country to a quarrel +between Mr. and Mrs. Jones, in which a mutual friend (England) is, from +the very nature of the case, obliged to maintain neutrality, leaving the +matter to the tender care of Sir Creswell. There never yet existed a +mutual friend who, however little he interfered with a matrimonial +difference, did not, in sympathy and moral support, take violent sides +with _one_ of the combatants; and Mr. Trollope would be first in taking +up the cudgels against private wrong. The North has never wished for +physical aid from England; but does Mr. Trollope remember what Mrs. +Browning has so nobly and humanely written? 'Non-intervention in the +affairs of neighboring States is a high political virtue; but +non-intervention does not mean passing by on the other side when your +neighbor falls among thieves, or Phariseeism would recover it from +Christianity.' England, the greatest of actual nations, had a part to +act in our war, and that part a noble one. Not the part of physical +intervention for the benefit of Lancashire and of a confederacy founded +upon slavery, which both Earl Russell and Lord Palmerston inform the +world will not take place 'at present.' Not the part of hypercriticism +and misconstruction of Northern 'Orders,' and affectionate blindness to +Southern atrocities. But such a part as was worthy of the nation, one of +whose greatest glories is that it gave birth to a Clarkson, a Sharpe, +and a Wilberforce. And England has much to answer for, in that she has +been found wanting, not in the cause of the North, but in the cause of +humanity. Had she not always told us that we were criminals of the +deepest dye not to do what she had done in the West-Indies, had she not +always held out to the world the beacon-light of emancipation, there +could be little censure cast upon the British ermine; but having laid +claim to so white and moral a robe, she subjects herself to the very +proper indignation of the anti-slavery party which now governs the +North. + +Mr. Trollope confesses that British sympathy is with the South, and +further writes: 'It seems to me that some of us never tire in abusing +the Americans and calling them names, for having allowed themselves to +be driven into this civil war. We tell them that they are fools and +idiots; we speak of their doings as though there had been some plain +course by which the war might have been avoided; and we throw it in +their teeth that they have no capability for war,' etc., etc. Contact +with the English abroad sent us home convinced of English animosity, and +this was before the Trent affair. A literary woman writes to America: +'There is only one person to whom I can talk freely upon the affairs of +your country. Here in England, they say I have lived so long _in Italy +that I have become an American_.' We have had nothing but abuse from the +English press always, excepting a few of the liberal journals. Mill and +Bright and Cobden alone have been prominent in their expression of +good-will to the North. And this is Abolition England! History will +record, that at the time when America was convulsed by the inevitable +struggle between Freedom and Slavery, England, actuated by selfish +motives, withheld that moral support and righteous counsel which would +have deprived the South of much aid and comfort, brought the war to a +speedier conclusion, gained the grateful confidence of the anti-slavery +North, and immeasurably aided the abolition of human slavery. + +It may be said that we of the North have no intention of touching the +'institution,' and therefore England can not sympathize with us. +Whatever the theory of the administration at Washington may have been, +he is insane as well as blind who does not see what is its practical +tendency. In the same length of time, this tendency would have been much +farther on the road to right had the strong arm of England wielded the +moral power which should belong to it. Mr. Trollope says: 'The complaint +of Americans is, that they have received no sympathy from England; but +it seems to me that a great nation should not require an expression of +sympathy during its struggle. Sympathy is for the weak, not for the +strong. When I hear two powerful men contending together in argument, I +do not sympathize with him who has the best of it; but I watch the +precision of his logic, and acknowledge the effects of his rhetoric. +There has been a whining weakness in the complaints made by Americans +against England, which has done more to lower them, as a people, in my +judgment, than any other part of their conduct during the present +crisis.' It is true that at the beginning of this war the North _did_ +show a whining weakness for English approbation, of which it is +sincerely to be hoped we have been thoroughly cured. We paid our +mother-land too high a compliment--we gave her credit for virtues which +she does not possess--and the disappointment incurred thereby has been +bitter in the extreme. We were not aware, however, that a sincere desire +for sympathy was an American peculiarity. We have long labored under the +delusion that the English, even, were very indignant with Brother +Jonathan during the Crimean war, when he failed to furnish the quota of +sympathy which our cousins considered was their due, but which we could +not give to a debauched 'sick man' whom, for the good of civilization, +we wished out of the world as quickly as possible. But England was +'strong;' why should she have desired sympathy? For, according to Mr. +Trollope's creed, the weak alone ought to receive sympathy. It seems to +be a matter entirely independent of right and wrong with Mr. Trollope. +It is sufficient for a man to prove his case to be '_strong_,' for Mr. +Trollope to side with his opponent. Demonstrate your weakness, whether +it be physical, moral, or mental, and Mr. Trollope will fight your +battles for you. On this principle--which, we are told, is English--the +exiled princes of Italy, especially the Neapolitan-Bourbon, the Pope, +Austria, and of course the Southern confederacy, should find their +warmest sympathizers among true Britons, and perhaps they do; but Mr. +Trollope, in spite of his theory, is not one of them. + +The emancipationist should _not_ look to England for aid or comfort, but +it will be none the worse for England that she has been false to her +traditions. 'I confess,' wrote Mrs. Browning--dead now a year--'that I +dream of the day when an English statesman shall arise with a heart too +large for England, having courage, in the face of his countrymen, to +assert of some suggested policy: 'This is good for your trade, this is +necessary for your domination; but it will vex a people hard by, it will +hurt a people farther off, it will profit nothing to the general +humanity; therefore, away with it! it is not for you or for me.'' The +justice of the poet yet reigns in heaven only; and dare we dream--we +who, sick at heart, are weighed down by the craft and dishonesty of our +public men--of the possibility of such a golden age? + +On the subject of religion as well, we are much at variance with Mr. +Trollope. Of course, it is to be expected that one who says, 'I love the +name of State and Church, and believe that much of our English +well-being has depended on it; _I have made up my mind to think that +union good, and am not to be turned away from that conviction_;' it is +to be expected, we repeat, that such an one should consider religion in +the States 'rowdy.' Surely, we will not quarrel with Mr. Trollope for +this opinion, however much we may regret it; as we consider it the glory +of this country, that while we claim for our moral foundation a fervent +belief in GOD and an abiding faith in the necessity of +religion, our government pays no premium to hypocrisy by having fastened +to its shirts one creed above all other creeds, made thereby more +respectable and more fashionable. 'It is a part of their system,' Mr. +Trollope continues, 'that religion shall be perfectly free, and that no +man shall be in any way constrained in that matter,' (and he sees +nothing to thank God for in this system of ours!) 'consequently, the +question of a man's religion is regarded in a free-and-easy manner.' +That which we have gladly dignified by the name of religious toleration, +(not yet half as broad as it should and will be,) Mr. Trollope degrades +by the epithet of 'free-and-easy.' This would better apply were ours the +toleration of indifference, instead of being a toleration founded upon +the unshaken belief that God has endowed every human being with a +conscience whose sufficiency unto itself, in matters of religious faith, +we have no right to question. And we are convinced that this experiment, +with which we started, has been good for our growth of mind and soul, as +well as for our growth as a nation. Even Mr. Trollope qualifies our +'rowdyism,' by saying that 'the nation is religious in its tendencies, +and prone to acknowledge the goodness of God in all things.' + +And now we have done with fault-finding. For all that we hereafter quote +from Mr. Trollope's book, we at once express our thanks and _sympathy_. +He is '_strong_,' but he is also human, and likes sympathy. + +More than true, if such a thing could be, is Mr. Trollope's comments +upon American politicians. 'The corruption of the venal politicians of +the nation stinks aloud in the nostrils of all men. It behoves the +country to look to this. It is time now that she should do so. The +people of the nation are educated and clever. The women are bright and +beautiful. Her charity is profuse; her philanthropy is eager and true; +her national ambition is noble and honest--honest in the cause of +civilization. But she has soiled herself with political corruption, and +has disgraced the cause of republican government by those whom she has +placed in her high places. Let her look to it NOW. She is nobly +ambitious of reputation throughout the earth; she desires to be called +good as well as great; to be regarded not only as powerful, but also as +beneficent She is creating an army; she is forging cannon, and preparing +to build impregnable ships of war. But all these will fail to satisfy +her pride, unless she can cleanse herself from that corruption by which +her political democracy has debased itself. A politician should be a man +worthy of all honor, in that he loves his country; and not one worthy of +contempt, in that he robs his country.' Can we plead other than guilty, +when even now a Senator of the United States stands convicted of a +miserable betrayal of his office? Will America heed the voice of Europe, +as well as of her best friends at home, before it is too late? Again +writes Mr. Trollope: ''It is better to have little governors than great +governors,' an American said to me once. 'It is our glory that we know +how to live without having great men over us to rule us.' That glory, if +ever it were a glory, has come to an end. It seems to me that all these +troubles have come upon the States because they have not placed high men +in high places.' Is there a thinking American who denies the truth of +this? And of our code of honesty--that for which Englishmen are most to +be commended--what is truly said of us? 'It is not by foreign voices, by +English newspapers, or in French pamphlets, that the corruption of +American politicians has been exposed, but by American voices and by the +American press. It is to be heard on every side. Ministers of the +Cabinet, Senators, Representatives, State Legislatures, officers of the +army, officials of the navy, contractors of every grade--all who are +presumed to touch, or to have the power of touching, public money, are +thus accused.... The leaders of the rebellion are hated in the North. +The names of Jefferson Davis, Cobb, Toombs, and Floyd, are mentioned +with execration by the very children. This has sprung from a true and +noble feeling; from a patriotic love of national greatness, and a hatred +of those who, for small party purposes, have been willing to lessen the +name of the United States. But, in addition to this, the names of those +also should be execrated who have robbed their country when pretending +to serve it; who have taken its wages in the days of its great struggle, +and at the same time have filched from its coffers; who have undertaken +the task of steering the ship through the storm, in order that their +hands might be deep in the meal-tub and the bread-basket, and that they +might stuff their own sacks with the ship's provisions. These are the +men who must be loathed by the nation--whose fate must be held up as a +warning to others--before good can come.' How long are the American +people to allow this pool of iniquity to stagnate, and sap the vitals of +the nation? How long, O Lord! how long? + +On the subject of education, Mr. Trollope--though indulging in a little +pleasantry on young girls who analyze Milton--does us full justice. 'The +one matter in which, as far as my judgment goes, the people of the +United States have excelled us Englishmen, so as to justify them in +taking to themselves praise which we can not take to ourselves or refuse +to them, is the matter of education.... The coachman who drives you, the +man who mends your window, the boy who brings home your purchases, the +girl who stitches your wife's dress--they all carry with them sure signs +of education, and show it in every word they utter.' But much as Mr. +Trollope admires our system of public schools, he does not see much to +extol in the at least Western way of rearing children. 'I must protest +that American babies are an unhappy race. They eat and drink just as +they please; they are never punished; they are never banished, snubbed, +and kept in the background, as children are kept with us; and yet they +are wretched and uncomfortable. My heart has bled for them as I have +heard them squalling, by the hour together, in agonies of discontent and +dyspepsia.' This is the type of child found by Mr. Trollope on Western +steamboats; and we agree with him that beef-steaks, _with pickles_, +produce a bad type of child; and it is unnecessary to confess to Mr. +Trollope what he already knows, that pertness and irreverence to parents +are the great faults of American youth. No doubt the pickles have much +to do with this state of things. + +While awarding high praise to American women _en masse_, Mr. Trollope +mourns over the condition of the Western women with whom he came in +contact, and we are sorry to think that these specimens form the rule, +though of course exceptions are very numerous. 'A Western American man +is not a talking man. He will sit for hours over a stove, with his cigar +in his mouth and his hat over his eyes, chewing the cud of reflection. A +dozen will sit together in the same way, and there shall not be a dozen +words spoken between them in an hour. With the women, one's chance of +conversation is still worse. 'It seemed as though the cares of this +world had been too much for them.... They were generally hard, dry, and +melancholy. I am speaking, of course, of aged females, from +five-and-twenty, perhaps, to thirty, who had long since given up the +amusements and levities of life.' Mr. Trollope's malediction upon the +women of New-York whom he met in the street-cars, is well merited, so +far as many of them are concerned; but he should bear in mind the fact +that these 'many' are foreigners, mostly uneducated natives of the +British isles. Inexcusable as is the advantage which such women +sometimes take of American gallantry, the spirit of this gallantry is +none the less to be commended, and the grateful smile of thanks from +American ladies is not so rare as Mr. Trollope imagines. Mr. Trollope +wants the gallantry abolished; we hope that rude women may learn a +better appreciation of this gallantry by its abolition in flagrant cases +only. Had Mr. Trollope once 'learned the ways' of New-York stages, he +would not have found them such vile conveyances; but we quite agree with +him in advocating the introduction of cabs. In seeing nothing but +vulgarity in Fifth Avenue, and a thirst for gold all over New-York City, +we think Mr. Trollope has given way to prejudice. There is no city so +generous in the spending of money as New-York. Art and literature find +their best patrons in this much-abused Gotham; and it will not do for +one who lives in a glass house to throw stones, for we are not the only +nation of shop-keepers. We do not blame Mr. Trollope, however, for +giving his love to Boston, and to the men and women of intellect who +have homes in and about Boston. + +We are of opinion that Mr. Trollope is too severe upon our hotels; for +faulty though they be, they are established upon a vastly superior plan +to those of any other country, if we are to believe our own experience +and that of the majority of travelers. Mr. Trollope sees no use of a +ladies' parlor; but Mr. Trollope would soon see its indispensability +were he to travel as an unprotected female of limited means. On the +matter of the Post-Office, however, he has both our ears; and much that +he says of our government, and the need of a constitutional change in +our Constitution, deserves attention--likewise what he says of +colonization. We do elevate unworthy persons to the altar of heroism, +and are stupid in our blatant eulogies. It is sincerely to be regretted +that so honest a writer did not devote two separate chapters to the +important subjects of drunkenness and artificial heat, which, had he +known us better, he would have known were undermining the American +_physique_. He does treat passingly of our hot-houses, but seems not to +have faced the worse evil. Of our literature, and of our absorption of +English literature, Mr. Trollope has spoken fully and well; and in his +plea for a national copyright, he might have further argued its +necessity, from the fact that American publishers will give no +encouragement to unknown native writers, however clever, so long as they +can steal the brains of Great Britain. + +To conclude. We like Mr. Trollope's book, for we believe him when he +says: 'I have endeavored to judge without prejudice, and to hear with +honest ears, and to see with honest eyes.' We have the firmest faith in +Mr. Trollope's honesty. We know he has written nothing that he does not +conscientiously believe, and he has given unmistakable evidence of his +good-will to this country. We are lost in amazement when he tells us: 'I +know I shall never again be at Boston, and that I have said that about +the Americans which would make me unwelcome as a guest if I were +there.' Said what? We should be thin-skinned, indeed, did we take +umbrage at a book written in the spirit of Mr. Trollope's. On the +contrary, the Americans who are interested in it are agreeably +disappointed in the verdict which he has given of them; and though they +may not accept his political opinions, they are sensible enough to +appreciate the right of each man to his honest convictions. Mr. +Trollope, though he sees in our future not two, but three, +confederacies, predicts a great destiny for the North. We can see but a +union of all--a Union cemented by the triumph of freedom in the +abolition of that which has been the taint upon the nation. If Mr. +Trollope's prophecies are fulfilled, (and God forbid!) it will be +because we have allowed the golden hour to escape. Pleased as we are +with Mr. Trollope the writer--who has not failed to appreciate the +self-sacrifice of Northern patriotism--Mr. Trollope the _man_ has a far +greater hold upon our heart; a hold which has been strengthened, rather +than weakened, by his book. The friends of Mr. Trollope extend to him +their cordial greeting, and Boston in particular will offer a hearty +shake of the hand to the writer of _North-America_, whenever he chooses +to take that hand again. + + + + +UP AND ACT. + + +The man who is not convinced, by this time, that the Union has come to +'the bitter need,' must be hard to convince. For more than one year we +have put off doing our _utmost_, and talked incessantly of the 'wants of +the enemy.' We have demonstrated a thousand times that they wanted +quinine and calomel, beef and brandy, with every other comfort, luxury, +and necessary, and have ended by discovering that they have forced every +man into their army; that they have, at all events, abundance of +corn-meal, raised by the negroes whom Northern Conservatism has dreaded +to free; that they are well supplied with arms from Abolition England, +and that every day finds them more and more warlike and inured to war. + +Time was, we are told, when a bold, 'radical push' would have prevented +all this. Time was, when those who urged such vigorous and overwhelming +measures--and we were among them--were denounced as insane and +traitorous by the Northern Conservative press. Time was, when the +Irishman's policy of capturing a horse in a hundred-acre lot, 'by +surrounding him,' might have been advantageously exchanged for the more +direct course of going _at_ him. Time _was_, when there were very few +troops in Richmond. All this when time--and very precious time--was. + +Just now, time _is_--and very little time to lose, either. The rebels, +it seems, can live on corn-meal and whisky as well under tents as they +once did in cabins. They are building rams and 'iron-clads,' and very +good ones. They have an immense army, and three or four millions of +negroes to plant for it and feed it. Hundreds of thousands of acres of +good corn-land are waving in the hot breezes of Dixie. These are facts +of the strongest kind--so strong that we have actually been compelled to +adopt some few of the 'radical and ruinous' measures advocated from the +beginning by 'an insane and fanatical band of traitors,' for whose blood +the New-York _Herald_ and its weakly ape, the Boston _Courier_, have not +yet ceased to howl or chatter. Negroes, it seems, are, after all, to be +employed sometimes, and all the work is not to be put upon soldiers who, +as the correspondent of the London _Times_ has truly said, have endured +disasters and sufferings caused by unpardonable neglect, such as _no_ +European troops would have borne without revolt. It is even thought by +some hardy and very desperate 'radicals,' that negroes may be armed and +made to fight for the Union; in fact, it is quite possible that, should +the North succeed in resisting the South a year or two longer, or should +we undergo a few more _very_ great disasters, we may go so far as to +believe what a great French writer has declared in a work on Military +Art, that 'War is war, and he wages it best who injures his enemy most.' +We are aware of the horror which this fanatical radical, and, of course, +Abolitionist axiom, by a writer of the school of Napoleon, must inspire, +and therefore qualify the assertion by the word 'may.' For to believe +that the main props of the enemy are to be knocked away from under them, +and that we are to fairly fight them in _every_ way, involves a +desperate and un-Christian state of mind to which no one should yield, +and which would, in fact, be impious, nay, even un-democratic and +un-conservative. + +It is true that by 'throwing grass' at the enemy, as President Lincoln +quaintly terms it, by the anaconda game, and above all, by constantly +yelling, 'No nigger!' and 'Down with the Abolitionists!' we have +contrived to lose some forty thousand good soldiers' lives by disease; +to stand where we were, and to have myriads of men paralyzed and kept +back from war just at the instant when their zeal was most needed. We +beg our readers to seriously reflect on this last fact. There are +numbers of essential and bold steps in this war, and against the enemy, +which _must_, in the ordinary course of events, be taken, as for +instance. General Hunter's policy of employing negroes, as General +Jackson did. With such a step, _honestly_ considered, no earthly +politics whatever has any thing to do. Yet every one of these sheer +necessities of war which a Napoleon would have grasped at the _first_, +have been promptly opposed as radical, traitorous, and infernal, by +those tories who are only waiting for the South to come in again to rush +and lick its hands as of old. Every measure, from the first arming of +troops down to the employment of blacks, has been fought by these +'reactionaries' savagely, step by step--we might add, in parenthesis, +that it has been amusing to see how they 'ate dirt,' took back their +words and praised these very measures, one by one, as soon as they saw +them taken up by the Administration. The _ecco la fica_ of Italian +history was a small humiliation to that which the 'democratic' press +presented when it glorified Lincoln's 'remuneration message,' and gilded +the pill by declaring it (Heaven knows how!) a splendid triumph over +Abolition--that same remuneration doctrine which, when urged in the +New-York _Tribune_, and in these pages, had been reviled as fearfully +'abolition!' + +However, all these conservative attacks in succession on every measure +which any one could see would become necessities from a merely military +point of view, have had their inevitable result: they have got into the +West, and have aided Secession, as in many cases they were intended to +do. The plain, blunt man, seeing what _must_ be adopted if the war is to +be carried on in earnest, and yet hearing that these inevitable +expediencies were all 'abolition,' became confused and disheartened. So +that it is as true as Gospel, that in the West, where 'Abolition' has +kept one man back from the Union, 'Conservatism' has kept ten. And the +proof may be found that while in the West, as in the East, the better +educated, more intelligent, and more energetic minds, have at once +comprehended the necessities of the war, and dared the whole, 'call it +Abolition or not,' the blinder and more illiterate, who were afraid of +being 'called' Abolitionists, have kept back, or remained by Secession +altogether. + +As we write, a striking proof of our news comes before us in a remark in +an influential and able Western conservative journal, the Nebraska +_News_, The remark in question is to the effect that the proposition +made by us in THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY, to partition the +confiscated real estate of the South among the soldiers of the Federal +army is nothing more nor less than 'a bribe for patriotism.' That is the +word. + +Now, politics apart--abolition or no abolition--we presume there are not +ten rational men in the country who believe that the proposition to +colonize Texas in particular, with free labor, or to settle free +Northern soldiers in the cotton country of the South, is other than +judicious and common-sensible. If it will make our soldiers fight any +better, it certainly is not very much to be deprecated. To settle +disbanded volunteers in the South so as to gradually drive away slave +labor by the superior value of free labor on lands confiscated or +public, is certainly not a very reprehensible proposition. But it +originated, as all the more advanced political proposals of the day do, +with men who favor Emancipation, present or prospective, and _therefore_ +it must be cried down! The worst possible construction is put upon it. +It is 'a bribe for patriotism,' and must not be thought of. 'Better lose +the victory,' says Conservatism, 'rather than inspire the zeal of our +soldiers by offering any tangible reward!' We beg our thousands of +readers in the army to note this. Since we first proposed in these +columns to _properly_ reward the army by giving to each man his share of +cotton-land, [we did not even go so far as to insist that the land +should absolutely be confiscated, knowing well, and declaring, that +Texas contains public land enough for this purpose,] the +democratic-conservative-pro-slavery press, especially of the West, has +attacked the scheme with unwonted vigor. For the West _understands_ the +strength latent in this proposal better than the East; it _knows_ what +can be done when free Northern vigor goes to planting and town-building; +it 'knows how the thing is done;' it 'has been there,' and sees in our +'bribe for patriotism' the most deadly blow ever struck at Southern +Aristocracy. Consequently those men who abuse Emancipation in its every +form, violently oppose our proposal to give the army such reward as +their services merit, and such as their residence in the South renders +peculiarly fit. It is 'a bribe;' it is extravagant; it--yes--it is +Abolition! The army is respectfully requested not to think of settling +in the South, but to hobble back to alms-houses in order that Democracy +may carry its elections and settle down in custom-houses and other snug +retreats. + +And what do the anti-energy, anti-action, anti-contraband-digging, +anti-every thing practical and go-ahead in the war gentlemen propose to +give the soldier in exchange for his cotton-land? Let the soldier +examine coolly, if he can, the next bullet-wound in his leg. He will +perceive a puncture which will probably, when traced around the edge and +carefully copied, present that circular form generally assigned to +a--cipher. _This_ represents, we believe, with tolerable accuracy, what +the anti-actionists and reactionists propose to give the soldier as a +recompense for that leg. For so truly as we live, so true is it that +there is not _one_ anti-Emancipationist in the North who is not opposed +to settling the army or any portion of it in the South, simply because +to do any thing which may in any way interfere with 'the Institution,' +or jar Southern aristocracy, forms no part of their platform! + +We believe this to be as plain a fact as was ever yet submitted to +living man. + +Now, are we to go to work in earnest, to boldly grasp at every means of +honorable warfare, as France or England would do in our case, and +overwhelm the South, or are we going to let it alone? Are we, for years +to come, to slowly fight our way from one small war-expediency to +another, as it may please the mongrel puppies of Democracy to gradually +get their eyes opened or not? Are we to arm the blacks by and by, or +wait till they shall have planted another corn-crop for the enemy? Shall +we inspire the soldiers by promising them cotton-lands now, or wait till +we get to the street of By and By, which leads to the house of Never? +Would we like to have our victory now, or wait till we get it? + +Up and act! We are waiting for grass to grow while the horse is +starving! Let the Administration no longer hold back, for lo! the people +are ready and willing, and one grasp at a fiercely brave, _decided_ +policy would send a roar of approval from ocean to ocean. One tenth part +of the wild desire to adopt instant and energetic measures which is now +struggling into life among the people, would, if transferred to their +leaders, send opposition, North and South, howling to Hades. We find the +irrepressible discontent gathering around like a thunder-storm. It +reaches us in letters. We _know_ that it is growing tremendously in the +army--the discontent which demands a bold policy, active measures, and +one great overwhelming blow. Every woman cries for it--it is everywhere! +Mr. Lincoln, you have waited for the people, and we tell you that the +people are now ready. The three hundred thousand volunteers are coming +bravely on; but, we tell you, DRAFT! That's the thing. The very +word has already sent a chill through the South. _They_ have seen what +can be done by bold, overwhelming military measures; by driving _every_ +man into arms; by being headlong and fearless; and know that it has put +them at once on equality with us--they, the half minority! And they +know, too, that when WE once begin the 'big game,' all will be up with +them. We have more than twice as many men here, and their own blacks are +but a broken reed. When we begin to _draft_, however, war will begin _in +earnest_. They dread that drafting far more than volunteering. They know +by experience, what we have not as yet learned, that drafting contains +many strange secrets of success. It is a _bold_ conscriptive measure, +and indicates serious strength and the _consciousness_ of strength in +government. Our government has hitherto lain half-asleep, half-awake, a +great, good-natured giant, now and then rolling over and crushing some +of the rats running over his bed, and now and then getting very badly +bitten. Wake up, Giant Samuel, all in the morning early! The rats are +coming down on thee, old friend, not by scores, but by tens of +thousands! Jump up, my jolly giant! for verily, things begin to look +serious. You must play the Wide-Awake game now; grasp your stick, knock +them right and left; call in the celebrated dog Halleck, who can kill +his thousand rats an hour, and cry to Sambo to carry out the dead and +bury them! It's rats _now_, friend Samuel, if it ever was! + +Can not the North play the entire game, and shake out the bag, as well +as the South? They have bundled out every man and dollar, dog, cat, and +tenpenny nail into the war, and done it _gloriously_. They have stopped +at nothing, feared nothing, believed in nothing but victory. Now let the +North step out! Life and wife, lands and kin, will be of small value if +we are to lose this battle and become the citizens of a broken country, +going backward instead of forward--a country with a past, but no future. +Better draw every man into the army, and leave the women to hoe and +reap, ere we come to that. _Draft_, Abraham Lincoln--draft, in +GOD'S name! Let us have one rousing, tremendous pull at +victory! Send out such armies as never were seen before. The West has +grain enough to feed them, and tide what may betide, you can arm them. +Let us try what WE can do when it comes to the last emergency. + +When we arise in our _full_ strength, England and France and the South +will be as gnats in the flame before us. And there is no time to lose. +France is 'tinkering away' at Mexico; foreign cannon are to pass from +Mexico into the South; our foe is considering the aggressive policy. +Abraham Lincoln, _the time has come!_ Canada is to attack from the +North, and France from Mexico. Your three hundred thousand are a trifle; +draw out your million; draw the last man who can bear arms--_and let it +be done quickly!_ This is your policy. Let the blows rain thick and +fast. Hurrah! Uncle Samuel--the rats are running! Strike quick, +though--_very_ quick--and you will be saved! + + + + +REMINISCENCES OF ANDREW JACKSON. + + +All public exhibitions have their peculiar physiognomies. During the +passage of General Jackson through Philadelphia, there was a very strong +party opposed to him, which gave a feature to the show differing from +others we had witnessed, but which became subdued in a degree by his +appearance. A firm and imposing figure on horseback, General Jackson was +perfectly at home in the saddle. Dressed in black, with a broad-brimmed +white beaver hat, craped in consequence of the recent death of his wife, +he bowed with composed ease and a somewhat military grace to the +multitude. His tall, thin, bony frame, surmounted by a venerable, +weather-beaten, strongly-lined and original countenance, with stiff, +upright, gray hair, changed the opinion which some had previously +formed. His military services were important, his career undoubtedly +patriotic; but he had interfered with many and deep interests. There was +much dissentient humming. + +The General bowed right and left, lifting his hat often from his head, +appearing at the same time dignified and kind. When the cavalcade first +marched down Chestnut street, there was no immediate escort, or it did +not act efficiently. Rude fellows on horseback, of the roughest +description, sat sideling on their torn saddles just before the +President, gazing vacantly in his face as they would from the gallery of +a theatre, but interrupting the view of his person from other portions +of the public. + +James Reeside, the celebrated mail-contractor, became very much provoked +at one of these fellows. Reeside rode a powerful horse before the +President, and with a heavy, long-lashed riding-whip in his hand, +attempted to drive the man's broken-down steed out of the way. But the +animal was as impervious to feeling as the rider to sense or decency, +and Reeside had little influence over a dense crowd, till the escort +exercised a proper authority in front. I saw the General smile at +Reeside's eagerness to clear the way for him. Of course, this sketch is +a glimpse at a certain point where the procession passed me. I viewed it +again in Arch street, and noticed the calmness with which the General +saluted a crowd of negroes who suddenly gave him a hearty cheer from the +wall of a graveyard where they were perched. He had just taken off his +hat to some ladies waving handkerchiefs on the opposite side of the +street, when he heard the huzza, and replied by a salutation to the +unexpected but not despised color. + +After the fatigue of the parade, when invited to take some refreshment, +Jackson asked for boiled rice and milk at dinner. There was some slight +delay to procure them, but he declined any thing else. + +I recollect an anecdote of Daniel Webster in relation to General +Jackson, which I wish to preserve. On some public occasion, an +entertainment was given, under large tents, near Point-no-Point, in +Philadelphia county, which the representatives to the Legislature were +generally invited to attend. Political antipathies and prejudices were +excessive at that day. No moderate person was tolerated, in the +slightest degree, by the more violent opponents of the Administration. +Mr. Webster was present, and rose to speak. His intelligent and serious +air of grave thought was impressively felt. He spoke his objections to a +certain policy of the Administration with a gentle firmness. I sat near +him. One of his intolerant friends made an inquiry, either at the close +of a short dinner-table address, or during his speech, if 'he was not +still in the practice of visiting at the White House?' I saw Webster's +brow become clouded, as he calmly but slowly explained, 'His position as +Senator required him to have occasional intercourse with the President +of the United States, whose views upon some points of national policy +differed widely from those he (Webster) was well known to entertain;' +when, as if his noble spirit became suddenly aware of the narrow +meanness that had induced the question, he raised himself to his full +hight, and looking firmly at his audience, with a pause, till he caught +the eye of the inquirer, he continued: 'I hope to God, gentlemen, never +to live to see the day when a Senator of the United States _can not_ +call upon the Chief Magistrate of the nation, on account of _any_ +differences in opinion either may possess upon public affairs!' This +honorable, patriotic, and liberal expression was most cordially +applauded by all parties. Many left that meeting with a sense of relief +from the oppression of political intolerance, so nearly allied to the +tyranny of religious bigotry. + +I had been introduced, and was sitting with a number of gentlemen in a +circle round the fire of the President's room, when James Buchanan +presented himself for the first time, as a Senator of the United States +from his native State. 'I am happy to see you, Mr. Buchanan,' said +General Jackson, rising and shaking him heartily by the hand, 'both +personally and politically. Sit down, sir.' The conversation was social. +Some one brought in a lighted corn-cob pipe, with a long reed-stalk, for +the President to smoke. He appeared waiting for it. As he puffed at it, +a Western man asked some question about the fire which had been reported +at the Hermitage. The answer made was, 'it had not been much injured,' I +think, 'but the family had moved temporarily into a log-house,' in +which, the General observed, 'he had spent some of the happiest days of +his life.' He then, as if excited by old recollections, told us he had +an excellent plantation, fine cattle, noble horses, a large still-house, +and so on. 'Why, General,' laughed his Western friend, 'I thought I saw +your name, the other day, along with those of other prominent men, +advocating the cold-water system?' 'I did sign something of the kind,' +replied the veteran, very coolly puffing at his pipe, 'but I had a very +good distillery, for all that!' Before markets became convenient, almost +all large plantations had stills to use up the surplus grains, which +could not be sold to a profit near home. Tanneries and blacksmiths' +shops were also accompaniments, for essential convenience. + +Martin, the President's door-keeper, was very independent, at times, to +visitors at the White House, especially if he had been indulging with +his friends, as was now and then the case. But he was somewhat +privileged, on account of his fidelity and humor. Upon one occasion he +gave great offense to some water-drinking Democrats--rather a rare +specimen at that day--who complained to the President. He promised to +speak to Martin about it. The first opportunity--early, while Martin was +cool--the President sent for him in private, and mentioned the +objection. 'Och! Jineral, dear!' said Martin, looking him earnestly in +the face, 'I'de hev enough to do ef I give ear to all the nonsense +people tell me, even about yerself, Jineral! I wonther _who_ folks don't +complain about, now-a-days? But if they are friends of yours, Jineral, +they maybe hed cause, ef I could only recollict what it was! So we'll +jist let it pass by this time, ef you plase, sur!' Martin remained in +his station. When the successor of Mr. Van Buren came in, the +door-keeper presented himself soon after to the new President, with the +civil inquiry: 'I suppose I'll hev to flit, too, with the _other_ +Martin?' He was smilingly told to be easy. + +I saw General Jackson riding in an open carriage, in earnest +conversation with his successor, as I was on the way to the Capitol to +witness the inaugural oath. A few days after, I shook hands with him for +the last time, as he sat in a railroad-car, about to leave Washington +for the West. Crowds of all classes leaped up to offer such salutations, +all of whom he received with the same easy, courteous, decided manner he +had exhibited on other occasions. + + + + +SHAKSPEARE'S CARICATURE OF RICHARD III. + + +'The youth of England have been said to take their religion from Milton, +and their history from Shakspeare:' and as far as they draw the +character of the last royal Plantagenet from the bloody ogre which every +grand tragedian has delighted to personate, they set up invention on the +pedestal of fact, and prefer slander to truth. Even from the opening +soliloquy, Shakspeare traduces, misrepresents, vilifies the man he had +interested motives in making infamous; while at the death of Jack Cade, +a cutting address is made to the future monarch upon his deformity, just +TWO _years before his birth!_ There is no sufficient authority for his +having been + + 'Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, + Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time + Into this breathing world, scarce half-made up, + And that so lamely and unfashionable, + The dogs bark at me, as I halt by them.' + +A Scotch commission addressed him with praise of the 'princely majesty +and royal authority sparkling in his face.' Rev. Dr. Shaw's discourse to +the Londoners, dwells upon the Protector's likeness to the noble Duke, +his father: his mother was a beauty, his brothers were handsome: a +monstrous contrast on Richard's part would have been alluded to by the +accurate Philip de Comines: the only remaining print of his person is at +least fair: the immensely heavy armor of the times may have bowed his +form a little, and no doubt he was pale, and a little higher shouldered +on the right than the left side: but, if Anne always loved him, as is +now proved, and the princess Elizabeth sought his affection after the +Queen's decease, he could not have been the hideous dwarf at which dogs +howl. Nay, so far from there being an atom of truth in that famous +wooing scene which provokes from Richard the sarcasm: + + 'Was ever woman in this humor wooed? + Was ever woman in this humor won?' + +Richard actually detected her in the disguise of a kitchen-girl, at +London, and renewed his early attachment in the court of the Archbishop +of York. And while Anne was never in her lifetime charged with +insensibility to the death of her relatives, or lack of feeling, she +died not from any cruelty of his, but from weakness, and especially from +grief over her boy's sudden decease. Richard indeed 'loved her early, +loved her late,' and could neither have desired nor designed a calamity +which lost him many English hearts. The burial of Henry VI. Richard +himself solemnized with great state; a favor that no one of Henry's +party was brave and generous enough to return to the last crowned head +of the rival house. + +Gloucester did not need to urge on the well-deserved doom of Clarence: +both Houses of Parliament voted it; King Edward plead for it; the +omnipotent relatives of the Queen hastened it with characteristic +malice; they may have honestly believed that the peaceful succession of +the crown was in peril so long as this plotting traitor lived. No doubt +it was. + +It is next to certain that Richard did not stab Henry VI., nor the +murdered son of Margaret, though he had every provocation in the insults +showered upon his father; was devotedly attached to King Edward, and +hazarded for him person and life with a constancy then unparalleled and +a zeal rewarded by his brother's entire confidence. + +Certain names wear a halter in history, and his was one. Richard I. was +assassinated in the siege of Chalone Castle; Richard II. was murdered at +Pomfret; Richard, Earl of Southampton, was executed for treason; +Richard, Duke of York, was beheaded with insult; his son, Richard III., +fell by the perfidy of his nobles; Richard, the last Duke of York, was +probably murdered by his uncle, in the Tower. + +At the decease of his brother Edward, the Duke of Gloucester was not +only the first prince of the blood royal, but was also a consummate +statesman, intrepid soldier, generous giver, and prompt executor, +naturally compassionate, as is proved by his large pensions to the +families of his enemies, to Lady Hastings, Lady Rivers, the Duchess of +Buckingham, and the rest; peculiarly devout, too, according to a pattern +then getting antiquated, as is shown by his endowing colleges of +priests, and bestowing funds for masses in his own behalf and others. +Shakspeare never loses an opportunity of painting Gloucester's piety as +sheer hypocrisy, but it was not thought so then; for there was a growing +Protestant party whom all these Romanist manifestations of the highest +nobleman in England greatly offended, not to say alarmed. + +Richard's change of virtual into actual sovereignty, in other words, the +Lord Protector's usurpation of the crown, was not done by violence: in +his first royal procession he was unattended by troops; a fickle, +intriguing, ambitious, and warlike nobility approved the change; +Buckingham, Catesby, and others, urged it. No doubt he himself saw that +the crown was not a fit plaything for a twelve years' old boy, in such a +time of frequent treason, ferocious crime, and general recklessness. +There is no question but what, as Richard had more head than any man in +England, he was best fitted to be at its head. + +The great mystery requiring to be explained is, not that 'the +Lancastrian partialities of Shakspeare have,' as Walter Scott said, +'turned history upside down,' and since the battle of Bosworth, no party +have had any interest in vindicating an utterly ruined cause, but how +such troops of nobles revolted against a monarch alike brave and +resolute, wise in council and energetic in act, generous to reward, but +fearful to punish. + +The only solution I am ready to admit is, the imputed assassination of +his young nephews; not only an unnatural crime, but sacrilege to that +divinity which was believed to hedge a king. The cotemporary ballad of +the 'Babes in the Wood,' was circulated by Buckingham to inflame the +English heart against one to whom he had thrown down the gauntlet for a +deadly wrestle. Except that the youngest babe is a girl, and that the +uncle perishes in prison, the tragedy and the ballad wonderfully keep +pace together. In one, the prince's youth is put under charge of an +uncle 'whom wealth and riches did surround;' in the other, 'the uncle is +a man of high estate.' The play soothes the deserted mother with, +'Sister, have comfort;' the ballad with, 'Sweet sister, do not fear.' +The drama says that: + + 'Dighton and Forrest, though they were fleshed villains, + Wept like two children, in their death's sad story.' + +And the poem: + + 'He bargained with two ruffians strong, + Who were of furious mood.' + +But + + 'That the pretty speech they had, + Made murderous hearts relent, + And they that took to do the deed. + Full sore did now repent.' + +There is a like agreement in their deaths: + + 'Thus, thus, quoth Dighton, girdling one another + Within their alabaster, innocent arms.' + +And the ballad: + + 'In one another's arms they died.' + +Finally, the greatest of English tragedies represents Richard's remorse +as: + + 'My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, + And every tongue brings in a several tale, + And every tale condemns me for a villain.' + +While the most pathetic of English ballads gives it: + + 'And now the heavy wrath of God + Upon their uncle fell; + Yea, fearful fiends did haunt his house. + His conscience felt a hell.' + +As it is probable that this ballad was started on its rounds by +Buckingham, the arch-plotter, was eagerly circulated by the Richmond +conspirators, and sung all over the southern part of England as the +fatal assault on Richard was about to be made, we shall hardly wonder +that, in an age of few books and no journals, the imputed crime hurled a +usurper from his throne. + +But was he really _guilty_? Did he deserve to be set up as this +scarecrow in English story? The weight of authority says, 'Yes;' facts +are coming to light in the indefatigable research now being made in +England, which may yet say: 'No.' + +The charge was started by the unprincipled Buckingham to excuse his +sudden conversion from an accomplice, if Shakspeare is to be credited, +to a bloodthirsty foe. It was so little received that, months afterward, +the convocation of British clergy addressed King Richard thus, 'Seeing +your most noble and blessed disposition in all other things'--so little +received that when Richmond actually appeared in the field, there was no +popular insurrection in his behalf, only a few nobles joined him with +their own forces; and when their treason triumphed, and his rival sat +supreme on Richard's throne, the three pretended accomplices in the +murder of the princes were so far from punishment that their chief held +high office for nearly a score of years, and then perished for assisting +at the escape of Lady Suffolk, of the house of York. And when Perkin +Warbeck appeared in arms as the murdered Prince Edward, and the +strongest possible motive urged Henry VII. to justify his usurpation by +producing the bones of the murdered princes, (which two centuries +afterward were pretended to be found at the foot of the Tower-stairs,) +at least to publish to the world the three murderers' confessions, and +demonstrate the absurdity of the popular insurrection, Lord Bacon +himself says, that Henry could obtain no proof, though he spared neither +money nor effort! We have even the statement of Polydore Virgil, in a +history written by express desire of Henry VII., that 'it was generally +reported and believed that Edward's sons were still alive, having been +conveyed secretly away, and obscurely concealed in some distant region.' + +And then the story is laden down with improbabilities. That Brakenbury +should have refused this service to so willful a despot, yet not have +fled from the penalty of disobedience, and even have received additional +royal favors, and finally sacrificed his life, fighting bravely in +behalf of the bloodiest villain that ever went unhung, is a large pill +for credulity to swallow. + +Again, that a mere page should have selected as chief butcher a nobleman +high in office, knighted long before this in Scotland, and that this +same Sir Edward Tyrrel should have been continued in office around the +mother of the murdered princes, and honored year after year with high +office by Henry VII., and actually made confidential governor of +Guisnes, and royal commissioner for a treaty with France, seems +perfectly incredible. All of Shakspeare's representation of this most +slandered courtier is, indeed, utterly false; while Bacon's repetition +of the principal charges only shows how impossible it is to recover a +reputation that has once been lost, and how careless history has been in +repeating calumnies that have once found circulation. + +Bayley's history of the Tower proves that what has been popularly +christened the Bloody Tower could never have been the scene of the +supposed murder; that no bones were found under any staircase there; so +that this pretended confirmation of the murder in the time of Charles +II., on which many writers have relied, vanishes into the stuff which +dreams are made of. + +And yet by this charge which the antiquarian Stowe declared was 'never +proved by any credible witness,' which Grafton, Hall, and Holinshead +agreed could never be certainly known; which Bacon declared that King +Henry in vain endeavored to substantiate, a brave and politic monarch +lost his crown, life, and historic fame! Nay, it is a curious fact that +Richard could not safely contradict the report of the princes' deaths +when it broke out with the outbreak of civil war, because it would have +been furnishing to the rebellion a justifying cause and a royal head, +instead of a milksop whom he despised and felt certain to overthrow. + +As it was, Richard left nothing undone to fortify his failing cause; he +may be thought even to have overdone. He doubled his spies, enlisted +fresh troops, erected fortifications, equipped fleets, twice had +Richmond at his fingers' ends, twice saw Providence take his side in the +dispersion of Richmond's fleet, the overthrow of Buckingham's force; +then was utterly ruined by the general treason of his most trusted +nobles and his not unnatural scorn of a pusillanimous rival. In vain did +he strive to be just and generous, vigilant and charitable, politic and +enterprising. The poor excuse for Buckingham's desertion, the refusal of +the grant of Hereford, is refuted by a Harleian MS. recording that royal +munificence; yet Buckingham, without any question, wove the net in which +this lion fell; he seduced the very officers of the court; he invited +Richmond over, assuring him of a popular uprising, which was proved to +be a mere mockery by the miserable handful that rallied around him, +until Richard fell at Bosworth. And after Buckingham's death, Richmond +merely followed _his_ plans, used the tools he had prepared, headed the +conspiracy which this unmitigated traitor arranged, and profited more +than Richard by his death, because he had not to fear an after-struggle +with Buckingham's insatiable ambition, overweening pride, and +unsurpassed popular power. + +As one becomes familiar with the cotemporary statements, the fall of +Richard seems nothing but the treachery which provoked his last outcry +on the field of death. Even Catesby probably turned against him; his own +Attorney-General invited the invaders into Wales with promise of aid; +the Duke of Northumberland, whom Richard had covered over with honor, +held his half of the army motionless while his royal benefactor was +murdered before his eyes. Stanley was a snake in the grass in the next +reign as well as this, and at last expiated his double treason too late +upon the scaffold. Yet while the nobles went over to Richmond's side, +the common people held back; only three thousand troops, perhaps +personal retainers of their lords, united themselves to the two thousand +Richmond hired abroad. It was any thing but a popular uprising against +the jealous, hateful, bloody humpback of Shakspeare; it excuses the +fatal precipitancy with which the King (instead of gathering his troops +from the scattered fortifications) not only hurried on the battle, but, +when the mine of treason began to explode beneath his feet on Bosworth +field, refused to seek safety by flight, but heading a furious charge +upon Richmond, threw his life magnificently away. + +Even had he been guilty of the great crime which cost him his crown, his +fate would have merited many a tear but for the unrivaled genius at +defamation with which the master-dramatist did homage to the triumphant +house of Lancaster. Lord Orford says, that it is evident the Tudors +retained all their Lancastrian prejudices even in the reign of +Elizabeth; and that Shakspeare's drama was patronized by her who liked +to have her grandsire presented in so favorable a light as the deliverer +of his native land from a bloody tyranny. + +Even in taking the darkest view of his case, we find that other English +sovereigns had sinned the same: Henry I. probably murdered the elder +brother whom he robbed; Edward III. deposed his own father; Henry IV. +cheated his nephew of the sceptre, and permitted his assassination; +Shakspeare's own Elizabeth was not over-sisterly to Mary of Scotland; +all around Richard, robbery, treason, violence, lust, murder, were like +a swelling sea. Why was he thus singled out for the anathema of four +centuries? Why was the naked corpse of one who fell fighting valiantly, +thrown rudely on a horse's back? Why was his stone coffin degraded into +a tavern-trough, and his remains tossed out no man knew where? Not +merely that the Plantagenets never lifted their heads from the gory dust +any more, so that their conquerors wrote the epitaph upon their tombs, +and hired the annalists of their fame; but, still more, that the weak +and assailed Henry required every excuse for his invasion and +usurpation; and that the principal nobility of England wanted a +hiding-place for the shame of their violated oaths, their monstrous +perfidy, their cowardly abandonment in the hour of peril of one of the +bravest leaders, wisest statesmen, and most liberal princes England ever +knew. + + + + +THE NEGRO IN THE REVOLUTION. + + +Whether the negro can or ought to be employed in the Federal army, or in +any way, for the purpose of suppressing the present rebellion, is +becoming a question of very decided significance. It is a little late in +the day, to be sure, since it is probable that the expensive amusement +of dirt-and-shovel warfare might, by the aid of the black, have been +somewhat shorn of its expense, and our Northern army have counted some +thousands of lives more than it now does, had the contraband been freely +encouraged to delve for his deliverance. Still, there are signs of sense +being slowly manifested by the great conservative mass, and we every day +see proof that there are many who, to conquer the enemy, are willing to +do a bold or practical thing, even if it _does_ please the +Abolitionists. Like the rustic youth who was informed of a sure way to +obtain great wealth if he would pay a trifle, they would not mind +getting _that_ fortune if it _did_ cost a dollar. It _is_ a pity, of +course, saith conservatism, that the South can not be conquered in some +potent way which shall at least make it feel a little bad, and at the +same time utterly annihilate that rather respectably sized majority of +Americans who would gladly see emancipation realized. However, as the +potent way is not known, we must do the best we can. In its secret +conclaves, respectable conservatism shakes its fine old head, and +smoothing down the white cravat inherited from the late great and good +Buchanan, admits that the _Richmond Whig_ is almost right, after +all--this Federal cause _is_ very much in the nature of a 'servile +insurrection' of Northern serfs against gentlemen; '_mais que +voulez-vous?_--we have got into the wrong boat, and must sink or swim +with the maddened Helots! And conservatism sighs for the good old days +when they blasphemed _Liberty_ at their little suppers, + + 'And--blest condition!-felt genteel.' + +To be sure, the portraits of Puritan or Huguenot or Revolutionary +ancestors frowned on them from the walls--the portraits of men who had +risked all things for freedom; ''but this is a different state of +things, you know;' we have changed all that--the heart is on the other +side of the body now--let us be discreet!' + +It is curious, in this connection of employing slaves as workmen or +soldiers, with the remembrance of the progressive gentlemen of the olden +time who founded this republic, to see what the latter thought in their +day of such aid in warfare. And fortunately we have at hand what we +want, in a very _multum in parvo_ pamphlet[5] by George H. Moore, +Librarian of the New-York Historical Society. From this we learn that +while great opposition to the project prevailed, owing to wrong +judgment as to the capacity of the black, the expediency and even +necessity of employing him was, during the events of the war, forcibly +demonstrated, and that, when he _was_ employed in a military capacity, +he proved himself a good soldier. + +There were, however, great and good men during the Revolution, who +warmly sustained the affirmative. The famous Dr. Hopkins wrote as +follows in 1776: + + 'God is so ordering it in his providence, that it seems absolutely + necessary something should speedily be done with respect to the + slaves among us, in order to our safety, and to prevent their + turning against us in our present struggle, in order to get their + liberty. Our oppressors have planned to gain the blacks, and induce + them to take up arms against us, by promising them liberty on this + condition; and this plan they are prosecuting to the utmost of + their power, by which means they have persuaded numbers to join + them. And should we attempt to restrain them by force and severity, + keeping a strict guard over them, and punishing them severely who + shall be detected in attempting to join our opposers, this will + only be making bad worse, and serve to render our inconsistence, + oppression and cruelty more criminal, perspicuous and shocking, and + bring down the righteous vengeance of heaven on our heads. The only + way pointed out to prevent this threatening evil, is to set the + blacks at liberty ourselves by some public acts and laws, and then + give them proper encouragement to labor, or take arms in the + defense of the American cause, as they shall choose. This would at + once be doing them some degree of justice, and defeating our + enemies in the scheme they are prosecuting.' + +'These,' says Mr. Moore, 'were the views of a philanthropic divine, who +urged them upon the Continental Congress and the owners of slaves +throughout the colonies with singular power, showing it to be at once +their duty and their interest to adopt the policy of emancipation.' They +did not meet with those of the administration of any of the colonies, +and were formally disapproved. But while the enlistment of negroes was +prohibited, the fact is still notorious, as Bancroft says, that 'the +roll of the army at Cambridge had from its first formation borne the +names of men of color.' 'Free negroes stood in the ranks by the side of +white men. In the beginning of the war, they had entered the provincial +army; the first general order which was issued by Ward had required a +return, among other things, of the 'complexion' of the soldiers; and +black men, like others, were retained in the service after the troops +were adopted by the continent.' + +It was determined on, at war-councils and in committees of conference, +in 1775, that negroes should be rejected from the enlistments; and yet +General Washington found, in that same year, that the negroes, if not +employed in the American army, would become formidable foes when +enlisted by the enemy. We may judge, from a note given by Mr. Moore, +that Washington had at least a higher opinion than his _confrères_ of +the power of the black. His apprehensions, we are told, were grounded +somewhat on the operations of Lord Dunmore, whose proclamation had been +issued declaring 'all indented servants, negroes or others, +(appertaining to rebels,) free,' and calling on them to join his +Majesty's troops. It was the opinion of the commander-in-chief, that if +Dunmore was not crushed before spring, he would become the most +formidable enemy America had; 'his strength will increase as a snow-ball +by rolling, and faster, if some expedient can not be hit upon to +convince the slaves and servants of the impotency of his designs.' +Consequently, in general orders, December 30th, he says: + + 'As the General is informed that numbers of free negroes are + desirous of enlisting, he gives leave to the recruiting-officers to + entertain them, and promises to lay the matter before the Congress, + who, he doubts not, will approve of it.' + +Washington communicated his action to Congress, adding: 'If this is +disapproved of by Congress, I will put a stop to it.' + +His letter was referred to a committee of three, (Mr. Wythe, Mr. Adams, +and Mr. Wilson,) on the fifteenth of January, 1776, and upon their +report on the following day the Congress determined: + + 'That the free negroes who have served faithfully in the army at + Cambridge may be reënlisted therein, but no others.' + +That Washington, at a later period at least, warmly approved of the +employment of blacks as soldiers, appears from his remarks to Colonel +Laurens, subsequent to his failure to carry out what even as an effort +forms one of the most remarkable episodes of the Revolution, full +details of which are given in Mr. Moore's pamphlet. + +On March 14th, 1779, Alexander Hamilton wrote to John Jay, then +President of Congress, warmly commending a plan of Colonel Laurens, the +object of which was to raise three or four battalions of negroes in +South-Carolina. We regret that our limits render it impossible to give +the whole of this remarkable document, which is as applicable to the +present day as it was to its own. + + 'I foresee that this project will have to combat much opposition + from prejudice and self-interest. The contempt we have been taught + to entertain for the blacks makes us fancy many things that are + founded neither in reason nor experience; and an unwillingness to + part with property of so valuable a kind will furnish a thousand + arguments to show the impracticability, or pernicious tendency, of + a scheme which requires such sacrifices. But it should be + considered that if we do not make use of them in this way, the + enemy probably will; and that the best way to counteract the + temptations they will hold out, will be to offer them ourselves. An + essential part of the plan is to give them their freedom with their + swords. This will secure their fidelity, animate their courage, + and, I believe, will have a good influence upon those who remain, + by opening a door to their emancipation. + + 'This circumstance, I confess, has no small weight in inducing me + to wish the success of the project; for the dictates of humanity + and true policy equally interest me in favor of this unfortunate + class of men. + + 'While I am on the subject of Southern affairs, you will excuse the + liberty I take in saying, that I do not think measures sufficiently + vigorous are pursuing for our defense in that quarter. Except the + few regular troops of South-Carolina, we seem to be relying wholly + on the militia of that and two neighboring States. These will soon + grow impatient of service, and leave our affairs in a miserable + situation. No considerable force can be uniformly kept up by + militia, to say nothing of the many obvious and well-known + inconveniences that attend this kind of troops. I would beg leave + to suggest, sir, that no time ought to be lost in making a draft of + militia to serve a twelve-month, from the States of North and + South-Carolina and Virginia. But South-Carolina, being very weak in + her population of whites, may be excused from the draft, on + condition of furnishing the black battalions. The two others may + furnish about three thousand five hundred men, and be exempted, on + that account, from sending any succors to this army. The States to + the northward of Virginia will be fully able to give competent + supplies to the army here; and it will require all the force and + exertions of the three States I have mentioned to withstand the + storm which has arisen, and is increasing in the South. + + 'The troops drafted must be thrown into battalions, and officered + in the best possible manner. The best supernumerary officers may be + made use of as far as they will go. If arms are wanted for their + troops, and no better way of supplying them is to be found, we + should endeavor to levy a contribution of arms upon the militia at + large. Extraordinary exigencies demand extraordinary means. I fear + this Southern business will become a very _grave_ one. + + 'With the truest respect and esteem, + I am, sir, your most obedient servant, + ALEXANDER HAMILTON. + + 'His Excellency, JOHN JAY, + President of Congress,' + + + +The project was warmly approved by Major-General Greene, and Laurens +himself, who proposed to lead the blacks, was enthusiastic in his hopes. +In a letter written about this time, he says: + + 'It appears to me that I should be inexcusable in the light of a + citizen, if I did not continue my utmost efforts for carrying the + plan of the black levies into execution, while there remains the + smallest hope of success. The House of Representatives will be + convened in a few days. I intend to qualify, and make a final + effort. Oh! that I were a Demosthenes! The Athenians never deserved + a more bitter exprobation than our countrymen.' + +But the Legislature of South-Carolina decided, as might have been +expected from the most tory of States in the Revolution, as it now is +the most traitorous in the Emancipation--for it is by _that_ name that +this war will be known in history. It rejected Laurens' proposal--his +own words give the best account of the failure: + + 'I was outvoted, having only reason on my side, and being opposed + by a triple-headed monster, that shod the baneful influence of + avarice, prejudice, and pusillanimity in all our assemblies. It was + some consolation to me, however, to find that philosophy and truth + had made some little progress since my last effort, as I obtained + twice as many suffrages as before.' + +'Washington,' says Mr. Moore, 'comforted Laurens with the confession +that he was not at all astonished by the failure of the plan, adding: + + ''That spirit of freedom, which at the commencement of this contest + would have gladly sacrificed every thing to the attainment of its + object, has long since subsided, and every selfish passion has + taken its place. It is not the public, but private interest, which + influences the generality of mankind, nor can the Americans any + longer boast an exception. Under these circumstances, it would + rather have been surprising if you had succeeded.' + +But the real lesson which this rejection of negro aid taught this +country was a bitter one. South-Carolina lost twenty-five thousand +negroes, and in Georgia between three fourths and seven eighths of the +slaves escaped. The British organized them, made great use of them, and +they became 'dangerous and well-disciplined bands of marauders.' As the +want of recruits in the American army increased, negroes, both bond and +free, were finally and gladly taken. In the department under General +Washington's command, on August 24th, 1778, there were nearly eight +hundred black soldiers. This does not include, however, the black +regiment of Rhode Island slaves which had just been organized. + +In 1778 General Varnum proposed to Washington that a battalion of negro +slaves be raised, to be commanded by Colonel Greene, Lieutenant-Colonel +Olney, and Major Ward. Washington approved of the plan, which, however, +met with strong opposition from the Rhode Island Assembly. The black +regiment was, however, raised, tried, 'and not found wanting.' As Mr. +Moore declares: + + 'In the battle of Rhode-Island, August 29th, 1778, said by + Lafayette to have been 'the best fought action of the whole war,' + this newly raised black regiment, under Colonel Greene, + distinguished itself by deeds of desperate valor, repelling three + times the fierce assaults of an overwhelming force of Hessian + troops. And so they continued to discharge their duty with zeal and + fidelity--never losing any of their first laurels so gallantly won. + It is not improbable that Colonel John Laurens witnessed and drew + some of his inspiration from the scene of their first trial in the + field.' + +A company of negroes from Connecticut was also raised and commanded by +the late General Humphreys, who was attached to the family of +Washington. Of this company cotemporary account says that they +'conducted themselves with fidelity and efficiency throughout the war.' +So, little by little, the negro came to be an effective aid, after all +the formal rejections of his service. In 1780, an act was passed in +Maryland to procure one thousand men to serve three years. The property +in the State was divided into classes of sixteen thousand pounds, each +of which was, within twenty days, to furnish one recruit, who might be +either a freeman or a slave. In 1781, the Legislature resolved to raise, +immediately, seven hundred and fifty negroes, to be incorporated with +the other troops. + +In Virginia an act had been passed in 1777, declaring that free negroes, +and free negroes only, might be enlisted on the footing with white men. +Great numbers of Virginians who wished to escape military service, +caused their slaves to enlist, having tendered them to the +recruiting-officers as substitutes for free persons, whose lot or duty +it was to serve in the army, at the same time representing that these +slaves were freemen. 'On the expiration of the term of enlistment, the +former owners attempted to force them to return to a state of +servitude, with equal disregard of the principles of justice and their +own solemn promise.' + +The iniquity of such proceedings soon raised a storm of indignation, and +the result was the passage of an Act of Emancipation, securing freedom +to all slaves who had served their term in the war. + +Such are the principal facts collected in this remarkable and timely +publication. It is needless to say that we commend it to the careful +perusal of all who desire conclusive information on a most important +subject. It is evident that we are going through nearly the same stages +of timidity, ignorance, and blind conservatism which were passed by our +forefathers, and shall come, if not too late, upon the same results. It +is historically true that Washington apparently had in the beginning +these scruples, but was among the first to lay them aside, and that +experience taught him and many others the folly of scrupling to employ +in regular warfare and in a regular way men who would otherwise aid the +enemy. These are undeniable facts, well worth something more than mere +reflection, and we accordingly commend the work in which they are set +forth, with all our heart, to the reader. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 5: Historical Notes on the Employment of Negroes in the +American Army of the Revolution. By George H. Moore. New-York: Charles +T. Evans, 532 Broadway. Price, ten cents.] + + + + +A MERCHANT'S STORY. + + 'All of which I saw, and part of which I was.' + + +CHAPTER II. + +The clock of St. Paul's was sounding eight. Buttoning my outside coat +closely about me--for it was a cold, stormy night in November--I +descended the steps of the Astor House to visit, in the upper part of +the city, the blue-eyed young woman who is looking over my shoulder +while I write this--it was nearly twenty years ago, reader, but she is +young yet! + +As I closed the outer door, a small voice at my elbow, in a tone broken +by sobs, said: + +'Sir--will you--please, sir--will you buy some ballads?' + +'Ballads! a little fellow like you selling ballads at this time of +night?' + +'Yes, sir! I haven't sold only three all day, sir; do, please sir, _do_ +buy some!' and as he stood under the one gas-burner which lit the +hotel-porch, I saw that his eyes were red with weeping. + +'Come inside, my little man; don't stand here in the cold. Who sends you +out on such a night as this to sell ballads?' + +'Nobody, sir; but mother is sick, and I _have_ to sell 'em! She's had +nothing to eat all day, sir. Oh! do buy some--_do_ buy some, sir!' + +'I will, my good boy; but tell me, have you no father?' + +'No, sir, I never had any--and mother is sick, _very_ sick, sir; and +she's nobody to do any thing for her but _me_--nobody but _me_, sir!' +and he cried as if his very heart would break. + +'Don't cry, my little boy, don't cry; I'll buy your ballads--all of +them;' and I gave him two half-dollar pieces--all the silver I had. + +'I haven't got so many as that, sir; I haven't got only twenty, and +they're only a cent a piece, sir;' and with very evident reluctance, he +tendered me back the money. + +'Oh! never mind, my boy, keep the money and the ballads too.' + +'O sir! thank you. Mother will be so glad, _so_ glad, sir!' and he +turned to go, but his feelings overpowering him, he hid his little face +in the big blanket-shawl which he wore, and sobbed louder and harder +than before. + +'Where does your mother live, my boy?' + +'Round in Anthony street, sir; some good folks there give her a room, +sir.' + +'Did you say she was sick?' + +'Yes, sir, very sick; the doctor says she can't live only a little +while, sir.' + +'And what will become of you, when she is dead?' + +'I don't know, sir. Mother says God will take care of me, sir.' + +'Come, my little fellow, don't cry any more; I'll go with you and see +your mother.' + +'Oh! thank you, sir; mother will be so glad to have you--so glad to +thank you, sir;' and, looking up timidly an my face, he added: 'You'll +_love_ mother, sir!' + +I took his hand in mine, and we went out into the storm. + +He was not more than six years old, and had a bright, intelligent, but +pale and peaked face. He wore thin, patched trowsers, a small, ragged +cap, and large, tattered boots, and over his shoulders was a worn woolen +shawl. I could not see the remainder of his clothing, but I afterward +discovered that a man's waistcoat was his only other garment. + +As I have said, it was a bleak, stormy night. The rain, which had fallen +all the day, froze as it fell, and the sharp, wintry wind swept down +Broadway, sending an icy chill to my very bones, and making the little +hand I held in mine tremble with cold. We passed several blocks in +silence, when the child turned into a side-street. + +'My little fellow,' I said, 'this is not Anthony street--that is further +on.' + +'I know it, sir; but I want to get mother some bread, sir. A good +gentleman down here sells to me very cheap, sir.' + +We crossed a couple of streets and stopped at a corner-grocery. + +'Why, my little 'un,' said the large, red-faced man behind the counter, +'I didn't know what had become of ye! Why haven't ye bin here to-day?' + +'I hadn't any money, sir,' replied the little boy. + +'An' haven't ye had any bread to-day, sonny?' + +'Mother hasn't had any, sir; a little bit was left last night, but she +made _me_ eat that, sir.' + +'D--n it, an' hasn't _she_ hed any all day! Ye mustn't do that agin, +sonny; ye must come whether ye've money or no; times is hard, but, I +swear, I kin give _ye_ a loaf any time.' + +'I thank you, sir,' I said, advancing from the doorway where I had stood +unobserved--'I will pay you;' and taking a roll of bills from my pocket, +I gave him one. 'You know what they want--send it to them at once.' + +The man stared at me a moment in amazement, then said: + +'An' do ye know 'em, sir?' + +'No, I'm just going there.' + +'Well, do, sir; they're bad off; ye kin do real good there, no mistake.' + +'I'll see,' I replied; and taking the bread in one hand and the little +boy by the other, I started again for his mother's. I was always a rapid +walker, but I had difficulty in keeping up with the little fellow as he +trotted along at my side. + +We soon stopped at the door of an old, weather-worn building, which I +saw by the light of the street-lamp was of dingy brick, three stories +high, and hermetically sealed by green board-shutters. It sat but one +step above the ground, and a dim light which came through the low +basement-windows, showed that even its cellar was occupied. My little +guide rang the bell, and in a moment a panel of the door opened, and a +shrill voice asked: + +'Who's there?' + +'It's only me, ma'am; please let me in.' + +'What, _you_, Franky, out so late as this!' exclaimed the woman, undoing +the chain which held the door. As she was about closing it she caught +sight of me, and eyeing me for a moment, said: 'Walk in, sir.' As I +complied with the invitation, she added, pointing to a room opening from +the hall: 'Step in there, sir.' + +'He's come to see mother, ma'am,' said the little boy. + +'You can't see _her_, sir, she's sick, and don't see company any more.' + +'I would see her for only a moment, madam.' + +'But she can't see nobody now, sir.' + +'Oh! mother would like to see him very much, ma'am; he's a very good +gentleman, ma'am,' said the child, in a pleading, winning tone. + +The real object of my visit seemed to break upon the woman, for, making +a low courtesy, she said: + +'Oh! she _will_ be glad to see you, sir; she's very bad off, very bad +indeed;' and she at once led the way to the basement stairway. + +The woman was about forty, with a round, full form, a red, bloated face, +and eyes which looked as if they had not known a wink of sleep for +years. She wore a dirty lace-cap, trimmed with gaudy colors, and a +tawdry red and black dress, laid off in large squares like the map of +Philadelphia. It was very low in the neck--remarkably so for the +season--and disclosed a scorched, florid skin, and a rough, mountainous +bosom. + +The furnishings of the hall had a shabby-genteel look, till we reached +the basement stairs, when every thing became bare, and dark, and dirty. +The woman led the way down, and opened the door of a front-room--the +only one on the floor, the rest of the space being open, and occupied as +a cellar. This room had a forlorn, cheerless appearance. Its front wall +was of the naked brick, through which the moisture had crept, dotting it +every here and there with large water-stains and blotches of mold. Its +other sides were of rough boards, placed upright, and partially covered +with a dirty, ragged paper. The floor was of wide, unpainted plank. A +huge chimney-stack protruded some three feet into the room, and in it +was a hole which admitted the pipe of a rusty air-tight stove that gave +out just enough heat to take the chill edge off the damp, heavy +atmosphere. This stove, a small stand resting against the wall, a +broken-backed chair, and a low, narrow bed covered with a ragged +patch-work counterpane, were the only furniture of the apartment. And +that room was the home of two human beings. + +'How do you feel to-night, Fanny?' asked the woman, as she approached +the low bed in the corner. There was a reply, but it was too faint for +me to hear. + +'Here, mamma,' said the little boy, taking me by the hand and leading me +to the bedside, 'here's a good gentleman who's come to see you. He's +_very_ good, mamma; he's given me a whole dollar, and got you lots of +things at the store; oh! lots of things!' and the little fellow threw +his arms around his mother's neck, and kissed her again and again in his +joy. + +The mother turned her eye upon me--such an eye! It seemed a black flame. +And her face--so pale, so wan, so woe-begone, and yet so sweetly, +strangely, beautiful--seemed that of some fallen angel, who, after long +ages of torment, had been purified, and fitted again for heaven! And it +was so. She had suffered all the woe, she had wept for all the sin, and +then she stood white and pure before the everlasting gates which were +opening to let her in! + +She reached me her thin, weak hand, and in a low voice, said: 'I thank +you, sir.' + +'You are welcome, madam. You are very sick; it hurts you to speak?' + +She nodded slightly, but said nothing. I turned to the woman who had +admitted me, and in a very low tone said: 'I never saw a person die; is +she not dying?' + +'No, sir, I guess not. She's seemed so for a good many days.' + +'Has she had a physician?' + +'Not for nigh a month. A doctor come once or twice, but he said it wan't +no use--he couldn't help her.' + +'But she should have help at once. Have you any one you can send?' + +'Oh! yes; I kin manage that. What doctor will you have?' + +I wrote on a piece of paper the name of an acquaintance--a skillful and +experienced physician, who lived not far off--and gave it to her. + +'And can't you make her a cup of tea, and a little chicken-broth? She +has had nothing all day.' + +'Nothing all day! I'm sure I didn't know it! I'm poor, sir--you don't +know how poor--but she shan't starve in my house.' + +'I suppose she didn't like to speak of it; but get her something as soon +as you can.' + +'I will, sir; I'll fix her some tea and broth right off.' + +'Well, do, as quick as possible. I'll pay you for your trouble.' + +'I don't want any pay, sir,' she replied, as she turned and darted from +the doorway as nimbly as if she had not been fat and forty. + +She soon returned with the tea, and I gave it to the sick girl, a +spoonful at a time, she being too weak to sit up. It was the first she +had tasted for weeks, and it greatly revived her. + +After a time, the doctor came. He felt her pulse, asked, her a few +questions in a low voice, and then wrote some simple directions. When he +had done that, he turned to me and said: 'Step outside for a moment; I +want to speak with you.' + +As we passed out, we met the woman going in with the broth. + +'Please give it to her at once,' I said. + +'Yes, sir, I will; but, gentlemen, don't stand here in the cold. Walk up +into the parlor--the front-room.' + +We did as she suggested, for the cellar-way had a damp, unhealthy air. + +The parlor was furnished in a showy, tawdry style, and a worn, ugly, +flame-colored carpet covered its floor. A coal-fire was burning in the +grate, and we sat down by it. As we did so, I heard loud voices, mingled +with laughter and the clinking of glasses, in the adjoining room. Not +appearing to notice the noises, the doctor asked: + +'Who is this woman?' + +'I don't know; I never saw her before. Is she dying?' + +'No, not now. But she can't last long; a week, at the most.' + +'She evidently has the consumption. That damp cellar has killed her; she +should be got out of it.' + +'The cellar hasn't done it; her very vitals are eaten up. She's been +beyond cure for six months!' + +'Is it possible? And such a woman!' + +'Oh! I see such cases every day--women as fine-looking as she is.' + +A ring came at the front-door, and in a moment I heard the woman coming +up the basement stairs. I had risen when the doctor made the last +remark, and was pacing up and down the room, deliberating on what should +be done. The parlor-door was ajar, and as the woman admitted the +new-comers, I caught a glimpse of them. They were three rough, +hard-looking characters; and one, from his unsteady gait, I judged to be +intoxicated. She seemed glad to see them, and led them into the room +from whence the noises proceeded. In a moment the doctor rose to go, +saying: 'I can do nothing more. But what do you intend to do here? I +brought you out to ask you.' + +'I don't know what _can_ be done. She ought not to be left to die +there.' + +'She'd prefer dying above-ground, no doubt; and if you relish fleecing, +you'll get her an upper room--but she's got to die soon any way, and a +day or two, more or less, down there, won't make any difference. Take my +advice--don't throw your money away, and don't stay here too late; the +house has a very hard name, and some of its rough customers would think +nothing of throttling a spruce young fellow like you.' + +'I thank you, doctor, but I think I'll run the risk--at least for a +while,' and I laughed good-humoredly at the benevolent gentleman's +caution. + +'Well, if you lose your small change, don't charge it to me.' Saying +this, he bade me 'good-night.' + +He found the door locked, barred, and secured by the large chain, and he +was obliged to summon the woman. When she had let him out, I asked her +into the parlor. + +'Who is this sick person?' I inquired. + +'I don't know, sir. She never gave me no name but Fanny. I found her and +her little boy on the door-step, one night, nigh a month ago. She was +crying hard, and seemed very sick, and little Franky was a-trying to +comfort her--he's a brave, noble little fellow, sir. She told me she'd +been turned out of doors for not paying her rent, and was afeared she'd +die in the street, though she didn't seem to care much about that, +except for the boy--she took on terrible about him. She didn't know what +_would_ become of him. I've to scrape very hard to get along, sir, for +times is hard, and my rent is a thousand dollars; but I couldn't see her +die there, so I took her in, and put a bed up in the basement, and let +her have it. 'Twas all I could do; but, poor thing! she won't want even +that long.' + +'It was very good of you. How has she obtained food?' + +'The little boy sells papers and ballads about the streets. The newsman +round the corner trusts him for 'em, and he's managed to make +twenty-five cents or more most every day.' + +'Can't you give her another room? She should not die where she is.' + +'I know she shouldn't, sir, but I hain't got another--all of 'em is +taken up; and besides, sir,' and she hesitated a moment, 'the noise up +here would disturb her.' + +I had not thought of that; and expressing myself gratified with her +kindness, I passed down again to the basement. The sick girl smiled as I +opened the door, and held out her hand again to me. Taking it in mine, I +asked: + +'Do you feel better?' + +'Much better,' she said, in a voice stronger than before. 'I have not +felt so well for a long time. I owe it to you, sir! I am very grateful.' + +'Don't speak of it, madam. Won't you have more of the broth?' + +'No more, thank you. I won't trouble you any more, sir--I shan't trouble +any one long;' and her eyes filled, and her voice quivered; 'but, O sir! +my child! my little boy! What _will_ become of him when I'm gone?' and +she burst into a hysterical fit of weeping. + +'Don't weep so, madam. Calm yourself; such excitement will kill you. God +will provide for your child. I will try to help him, madam.' + +She looked at me with those deep, intense eyes. A new light seemed to +come into them; it overspread her face, and lit up her thin, wan +features with a strange glow. + +'It must be so,' she said, 'else why were you led here? God must have +sent you to me for that!' + +'No doubt he did, madam. Let it comfort you to think so.' + +'It does, oh! it does. And, O my Father!' and she looked up to Him as +she spoke: 'I thank thee! Thy poor, sinful, dying child thanks thee; +and, oh! bless _him_, forever bless him, for it!' + +I turned away to hide the emotion I could not repress. A moment after, +not seeing the little boy, I asked: + +'Where is your son?' + +'Here, sir.' And turning down the bed-clothing, she showed him sleeping +quietly by her side, all unconscious of the misery and the sin around +him, and of the mighty crisis through which his young life was passing. + +Saying I would return on the following day, I shortly afterward bade her +'good-night,' and left the house. + + +CHAPTER III. + +It was noon on the following day when I again visited the house in +Anthony street. As I opened the door of the sick woman's room, I was +startled by her altered appearance. Her eye had a strange, wild light, +and her face already wore the pallid hue of death. She was bolstered up +in bed, and the little boy was standing by her side, weeping, his arms +about her neck. I took her hand in mine, and in a voice which plainly +spoke my fears, said: + +'You are worse!' + +In broken gasps, and in a low, a very low tone, her lips scarcely +moving, she answered: + +'No! I am--better--much--better. I knew you--were coming. She told me +so.' + +'_Who_ told you so?' I asked, very kindly, for I saw that her mind was +wandering. + +'My mother--she has been with me--all the day--and I have been so--so +happy, so--_very_ happy! I am going now--going with her--I've only +waited--for you!' + +'Say no more now, madam, say no more; you are too weak to talk.' + +'But I _must_ talk. I am--dying, and I must tell--you all before--I go!' + +'I would gladly hear you, but you have not strength for it now. Let me +get something to revive you.' + +She nodded assent, and looking at her son, said: + +'Take Franky.' + +The little boy kissed her, and followed me from the room. When we had +reached the upper-landing, I summoned the woman of the house, and said +to him: + +'Now, Franky, I want you to stay a little while with this good lady; +your mother would talk with me.' + +'But mother says she's dying, sir,' cried the little fellow, clinging +closely to me; 'I don't want her to die, sir. Oh! I want to be with her, +sir!' + +'You shall be, very soon, my boy; your _mother_ wants you to stay with +this lady now.' + +He released his hold on my coat, and sobbing violently, went with the +red-faced woman. I hurried back from the apothecary's, and seating +myself on the one rickety chair by her bedside, gave the sick woman the +restorative. She soon revived, and then, in broken sentences, and in a +low, weak voice, pausing every now and then to rest or to weep, she told +me her story. Weaving into it some details which I gathered from others +after her death, I give it to the reader as she outlined it to me. + +She was the only daughter of a well-to-do farmer in the town of B----, +New-Hampshire. Her mother died when she was a child, and left her to the +care of a paternal aunt, who became her father's housekeeper. This aunt, +like her father, was of a cold, hard nature, and had no love for +children. She was, however, an exemplary, pious woman. She denied +herself every luxury, and would sit up late of nights to braid straw and +knit socks, that she might send tracts and hymn-books to the poor +heathen; but she never gave a word of sympathy, or a look of love to the +young being that was growing up by her side. The little girl needed +kindness and affection, as much as plants need the sun; but the good +aunt had not these to give her. When the child was six years old, she +was sent to the district-school. There she met a little boy not quite +five years her senior, and they soon became warm friends. He was a +brave, manly lad, and she thought no one was ever so good, or so +handsome as he. Her young heart found in him what it craved for--some +one to lean on and to love, and she loved him with all the strength of +her child-nature. He was very kind to her. Though his home was a mile +away, he came every morning to take her to school, and in the long +summer vacations he almost lived at her father's house. And thus four +years flew away--flew as fast as years that are winged with youth and +love always fly--and though her father was harsh, and her aunt cold and +stern, she did not know a grief, or shed a tear in all that time. + +One day, late in summer, toward the close of those four years, +John--that was his name--came to her, his face beaming all over with +joy, and said: + +'O Fanny! I am going--going to Boston. Father [he was a richer man than +her father] has got me into a great store there--a great store, and I'm +to stay till I'm twenty-one--they won't pay me hardly any thing--only +fifty dollars the first year, and twenty-five more every other year--but +father says it's a great store, and it'll be the making of me.' And he +danced and sung for joy, but she wept in bitter grief. + +Well, five more years rolled away--this time they were not winged as +before--and John came home to spend his two weeks of summer vacation. He +had come every year, but then he said to her what he had never said +before--that which a woman never forgets. He told her that the old +Quaker gentleman, the head of the great house he was with, had taken a +fancy to him, and was going to send him to Europe, in the place of the +junior partner, who was sick, and might never get well. That he should +stay away a year, but when he came back, he was sure the old fellow +would make him a partner, and then--and he strained her to his heart as +he said it--'then I will make you my little wife, Fanny, and take you to +Boston, and you shall be a fine lady--as fine a lady as Kate Russell, +the old man's daughter.' And again he danced and sung, and again she +wept, but this time it was for joy. + +He staid away a little more than a year, and when he returned he did not +come at once to her, but he wrote that he would very soon. In a few days +he sent her a newspaper, in which was a marked notice, which read +somewhat as follows: + + 'The co-partnership heretofore existing under the name and style of + RUSSELL, ROLLINS & Co., has been dissolved by the death of + DAVID GRAY, Jr. + + 'The outstanding affairs will be settled, and the business + continued, by the surviving partners, who have this day admitted + Mr. JOHN HALLET to an interest in their firm.' + +The truth had been gradually dawning upon me, yet when she mentioned his +name, I sprang involuntarily to my feet, exclaiming: + +'John Hallet! and were _you_ betrothed to _him_?' + +The sick woman had paused from exhaustion, but when I said that, she +made a feeble effort to raise herself, and said in a stronger voice than +before: + +'Do you know him--sir?' + +'Know him! Yes, madam;' and I paused and spoke in a lower tone, for I +saw that my manner was unduly exciting her; 'I know him well.' + +I did know him _well_, and it was on the evening of the day that notice +was written, and just one month after David had followed his only son to +the grave, that I, a boy of sixteen, with my hat in my hand, entered the +inner office of the old counting-room to which I have already introduced +the reader. Mr. Russell, a genial, gentle, good old man, was seated at +his desk, writing; and Mr. Rollins sat at his, poring over some long +accounts. + +'Mr. Russell and Mr. Rollins,' I said very respectfully, 'I have come to +bid you good-by. I am going to leave you.' + +'Thee going to leave!' exclaimed Mr. Russell, laying down his +spectacles; 'what does thee mean, Edmund?' + +'I mean, I don't want to stay any longer, sir,' I replied, my voice +trembling with emotion. + +'But you must stay, Edmund,' said Mr. Rollins, in his harsh, imperative +way. 'Your uncle indentured you to us till you are twenty-one, and you +can't go.' + +'I _shall_ go, sir,' I replied, with less respect than he deserved. 'My +uncle indentured me to the old firm; I am not bound to stay with the +new.' + +Mr. Russell looked grieved, but in the same mild tone as before, he +said: + +'I am sorry, Edmund, very sorry, to hear thee say that. Thee can go if +thee likes; but it grieves me to hear thee quibble so. Thee will not +prosper, my son, if thee follows this course in life.' And the moisture +came into the old man's eyes as he spoke. It filled mine, and rolled in +large drops down my cheeks, as I replied: + +'Forgive me, sir, for speaking so. I do not want to do wrong, but I +_can't_ stay with John Hallet.' + +'Why can't thee stay with John?' + +'He don't like me, sir. We are not friends.' + +'Why are you not friends?' + +'Because I know him, sir.' + +'What do you know of him?' asked Mr. Rollins, in the same harsh, abrupt +tone. I had never liked Mr. Rollins, and his words just then stung me to +the quick, I forgot myself, for I replied: + +'I know him to be a lying, deceitful, hypocritical scoundrel, sir.' + +Some two years before, Hallet had joined the church in which Mr. Rollins +was a deacon, and was universally regarded as a pious, devout young man. +The opinion I expressed was, therefore, rank heterodoxy. To my surprise, +Mr. Rollins turned to Mr. Russell and said: + +'I believe the boy is right, Ephraim; John professes too much to be +entirely sincere; I've told you so before.' + +'I can't think so, Thomas; but it's too late to alter things now. We +shall see. Time will prove him.' + +I soon left, but not till they had shaken me warmly by the hand, wished +me well, and tendered me their aid whenever I required it. In +after-years they kept their word. + +Yes, I did know John Hallet. The old gentleman never knew him, but time +proved him, and those whom that good old man loved with all the love of +his large, noble heart, suffered because he did not know him as I did. + +After I had given her some of the cordial, and she had rested awhile, +the sick girl resumed her story. + +In about a month Hallet came. He pictured to her his new position; the +wealth and standing it would give him, and he told her that he was +preparing a little home for her, and would soon return and take her with +him forever. + +[When he said that, he had been for over a year affianced to another--a +rich man's only child--a woman older than he, whose shriveled, jaundiced +face, weak, scrawny body, and puny, sickly soul, would have been +repulsive even to him, had not money been his god.] + +The simple, trusting girl believed him. He importuned her--she loved +him--and she fell! + +About a month afterward, taking up a Boston paper, she read the marriage +of Mr. John Hallet, merchant, to Miss ----. 'Some other person has +his name,' she thought. 'It can not be he, yet it is strange!' It _was_ +strange, but it was _true_, for there, in another column, she saw that: +'Mr. John Hallet, of the house of Russell, Rollins & Co., and his +accomplished lady, were passengers by the steamer Cambria, which sailed +from this port yesterday for Liverpool.' + +The blow crushed her. But why need I tell of her grief, her agony, her +despair? For months she did not leave her room; and when at last she +crawled into the open air, the nearest neighbors scarcely recognized +her. + +It was long, however, before she knew all the wrong that Hallet had done +her. Her aunt noticed her altered appearance, and questioned her. She +told her all. At first, the cold, hard woman blamed her, and spoke +harshly to her; but, though cold and harsh, she had a woman's heart, and +she forgave her. She undertook to tell the story to her brother. He had +his sister's nature; was a strict, pious, devout man; prayed every +morning and evening in his family, and, rain or shine, went every Sunday +to hear two dull, cast-iron sermons at the old meeting-house, but he had +not her woman's heart. He stormed and raved for a time, and then he +cursed his only child, and drove her from his house. The aunt had forty +dollars--the proceeds of sock-knitting and straw-braiding not yet +invested in hymn-books, and with one sigh for the poor heathen, she gave +it to her. With that, and a small satchel of clothes, and with two +little hearts beating under her bosom, she went out into the world. +Where could she go? She knew not, but she wandered on till she reached +the village. The stage was standing before the tavern-door, and the +driver was mounting the box to start. She thought for a moment. She +could not stay there. It would anger her father, if she did--no one +would take her in--and besides, she could not meet, in her misery and +her shame, those who had known her since childhood. She spoke to the +driver; he dismounted, opened the door, and she took a seat in the coach +to go--she did not know whither, she did not care where. + +They rode all night, and in the morning reached Concord. As she stepped +from the stage, the red-faced landlord asked her if she was going +further. She said, 'I do not know, sir;' but then a thought struck her. +It was five months since Hallet had started for Europe, and perhaps he +had returned. She would go to him. Though he could not undo the wrong he +had done, he still could aid and pity her. She asked the route to +Boston, and after a light meal, was on the way thither. + +She arrived after dark, and was driven to the Marlboro Hotel--that +Eastern Eden for lone women and tobacco-eschewing men--and there she +passed the night. Though weak from recent illness, and worn and wearied +with the long journey, she could not rest or sleep. The great sorrow +that had fallen on her had driven rest from her heart, and quiet sleep +from her eye-lids forever. In the morning she inquired the way to +Russell, Rollins & Co.'s, and after a long search found the grim, old +warehouse. She started to go up the rickety old stairs, but her heart +failed her. She turned away and wandered off through the narrow, crooked +streets--she did not know for how long. She met the busy crowd hurrying +to and fro, but no one noticed or cared for her. She looked at the neat, +cheerful homes smiling around her, and she thought how every one had +shelter and friends but her. She gazed up at the cold, gray sky, and oh! +how she longed that it might fall down and bury her forever. And still +she wandered till her limbs grew weary and her heart grew faint. At last +she sank down exhausted, and wept--wept as only the lost and the utterly +forsaken can weep. Some little boys were playing near, and after a time +they left their sports, and came to her. They spoke kindly to her, and +it gave her strength. She rose and walked on again. A livery-carriage +passed her, and she spoke to the coachman. After a long hour she stood +once more before the old warehouse. It was late in the afternoon, and +she had eaten nothing all day, and was very faint and tired. As she +turned to go up the old stairway, her heart again failed her, but +summoning all her strength, she at last entered the old counting-room. + +A tall, spare, pleasant-faced man, was standing at the desk, and she +asked him if Mr. John Hallet was there. + +'No, madam, he's in Europe.' + +'When will he come back, sir?' + +'Not for a year, madam;' and David raised his glasses and looked at her. +He had not done it before. + +Her last hope had failed, and with a heavy, crushing pain in her heart, +and a dull, dizzy feeling in her head, she turned to go. As she +staggered away a hand was gently placed on her arm, and a mild voice +said: + +'You are ill, madam; sit down.' + +She took the proffered seat, and an old gentleman came out of the inner +office. + +'What! what's this, David?' he asked. 'What ails the young woman?' + +(She was then not quite seventeen.) + +'She's ill, sir,' said David. + +'Only a little tired, sir; I shall be better soon.' + +'But thee _is_ ill, my child; thee looks so. Come here, Kate!' and the +old gentleman raised his voice as if speaking to some one in the inner +room. The sick girl lifted her eyes, and saw a blue-eyed, golden-haired +young woman, not so old as she was. + +'She seems very sick, father. Please, David, get me some water;' and the +young lady undid the poor girl's bonnet, and bathed her temples with the +cool, grateful fluid. After a while the old gentleman asked: + +'What brought thee here, young woman?' + +'I came to see John--Mr. Hallet, I mean, sir.' + +'Thee knows John, then?' + +'Oh! yes, sir.' + +'Where does thee live?' + +She was about to say that she had no home, but checking herself, for it +would seem strange that a young girl who knew John Hallet, should be +homeless, she answered: + +'In New-Hampshire. I live near old Mr. Hallet's, sir. I came to see John +because I've known him ever since I was a child.' + +She drank of the water, and after a little time rose to go. As she +turned toward the door, the thought of going out alone, with her great +sorrow, into the wide, desolate world, crossed her mind, the heavy, +crushing pain came again into her heart, the dull, dizzy feeling into +her head, the room reeled, and she fell to the floor. + +It was after dark when she came to herself. She was lying on a bed in a +large, splendidly furnished room, and the same old gentleman and the +same young woman were with her. Another old gentleman was there, and as +she opened her eyes, he said: + +'She will be better soon; her nervous system has had a severe shock; the +difficulty is there. If you could get her to confide in you, 'twould +relieve her; it is _hidden_ grief that kills people. She needs rest, +now. Come, my child, take this,' and he held a fluid to her lips. She +drank it, and in a few moments sank into a deep slumber. + +It was late on the following morning when she awoke, and found the same +young woman at her bedside. + +'You are better, now, my sister. A few days of quiet rest will make you +well,' said the young lady. + +The kind, loving words, almost the first she had ever heard from woman, +went to her heart, and she wept bitterly as she replied: + +'Oh! no, there is no rest, no more rest for me!' + +'Why so? What is it that grieves you? Tell me; it will ease your pain to +let me share it with you.' + +She told her, but she withheld his name. Once it rose to her lips, but +she thought how those good people would despise him, how Mr. Russell +would cast him off, how his prospects would be blasted, and she kept it +back. + +'And that is the reason you went to John? You knew what a good, +Christian young man he is, and you thought he would aid you?' + +'Yes!' said the sick girl. + +Thus she punished him for the great wrong he had done her; thus she +recompensed him for robbing her of home, of honor, and of peace! + +Kate told her father the story, and the good old man gave her a room in +one of his tenement houses, and there, a few months later, she gave +birth to a little boy and girl. She was very sick, but Kate attended to +her wants, procured her a nurse, and a physician, and gave her what she +needed more than all else--kindness and sympathy. + +Previous to her sickness she had earned a support by her needle, and +when she was sufficiently recovered, again had recourse to it. Her +earnings were scanty, for she was not yet strong, but they were eked out +by an occasional remittance from her aunt, which good lady still adhered +to her sock-knitting, straw-braiding habits, but had turned her back +resolutely on her benighted brethren and sisters of the Feejee Islands. + +Thus nearly a year wore away, when her little girl sickened and died. +She felt a mother's pang at first, but she shed no tears, for she knew +it was 'well with the child;' that it had gone where it would never know +a fate like hers. + +The watching with it, added to her other labors, again undermined her +health. The remittance from her aunt did not come as usual, and though +she paid no rent, she soon found herself unable to earn a support. The +Russells had been so good, so kind, had done so much for her, that she +could not ask them for more. What, then, should she do? One day, while +she was in this strait, Kate called to see her, and casually mentioned +that John Hallet had returned. She struggled with her pride for a time, +but at last made up her mind to apply to him. She wrote to him; told him +of her struggles, of her illness, of her many sufferings, of her little +boy--his image, his child--then playing at her feet, and she besought +him by the love he bore her in their childhood, not to let his once +affianced wife, and his poor, innocent child STARVE! + +Long weeks went by, but no answer came; and again she wrote him. + +One day, not long after sending this last letter, as she was crossing +the Common to her attic in Charles street, she met him. He was alone, +and saw her, but attempted to pass her without recognition. She stood +squarely in his way, and told him she _would_ be heard. He admitted +having received her letters, but said he could do nothing for her; that +the brat was not _his_; that she must not attempt to fasten on _him_ the +fruit of her debaucheries; that no one would believe her if she did; and +he added, as he turned away, that he was a married man, and a Christian, +and could not be seen talking with a lewd woman like her. + +She was stunned. She sank down on one of the benches on the Common, and +tried to weep; but the tears would not come. For the first time since he +so deeply, basely wronged her, she felt a bitter feeling rising in her +heart. She rose, and turned her steps up Beacon Hill toward Mr. +Russell's, fully determined to tell Kate all. She was admitted, and +shown to Miss Russell's room. She told her that she had met her seducer, +and how he had cast her off. + +'Who is he?' asked Kate. 'Tell me, and father shall publish him from one +end of the universe to the other! He does not deserve to live.' + +His name trembled on her tongue. A moment more, and John Hallet would +have been a ruined man, branded with a mark that would have followed him +through the world. But she paused; the vision of his happy wife, of the +innocent child just born to him, rose before her, and the words melted +away from her lips unspoken. + +Kate spoke kindly and encouragingly to her, but she heeded her not. One +only thought had taken possession of her: how could she throw off the +mighty load that was pressing on her soul? + +After a time, she rose and left the house. As she walked down Beacon +street, the sun was just sinking in the West, and its red glow mounted +midway up the heavens. As she looked at it, the sky seemed one great +molten sea, with its hot, lurid waves surging all around her. She +thought it came nearer; that it set on fire the green Common and the +great houses, and shot fierce, hot flames through her brain and into her +very soul. For a moment, she was paralyzed and sank to the ground; then +springing to her feet, she flew to her child. She bounded down the long +hill, and up the steep stairways, and burst into the room of the good +woman who was tending him, shouting: + +'Fire! fire! The world is on fire! Run! run! the world is on fire!' + +She caught up her babe and darted away. With him in her arms, she flew +down Charles street, across the Common, and through the crowded +thoroughfares, till she reached India Wharf, all the while muttering, +'Water, water;' water to quench the fire in her blood, in her brain, in +her very soul. + +She paused on the pier, and gazed for a moment at the dark, slimy flood; +then she plunged down, down, where all is forgetfulness! + +She had a dim recollection of a storm at sea; of a vessel thrown +violently on its beam-ends; of a great tumult, and of voices louder than +she ever heard before--voices that rose above the howling of the tempest +and the surging of the great waves--calling out: 'All hands to clear +away the foremast!' But she knew nothing certain. All was chaos. + +The next thing she remembered was waking one morning in a little room +about twelve feet square, with a small grated opening in the door. The +sun had just risen, and by its light she saw she was lying on a low, +narrow bed, whose clothing was spotlessly white and clean. Her little +boy was sleeping by her side. His little cheeks had a rosier, healthier +hue than they ever wore before; and as she turned down the sheet, she +saw he had grown wonderfully. She could hardly credit her senses. Could +that be _her_ child? + +She spoke to him. He opened his eyes and smiled, and put his little +mouth up to hers, saying, 'Kiss, mamma, kiss Fanky.' She took him in her +arms, and covered him with kisses. Then she rose to dress herself. A +strange but neat and tidy gown was on the chair, and she put it on; it +fitted exactly. Franky then rolled over to the front of the bed, and +putting first one little foot out and then the other, let himself down +to the floor. 'Can it be?' she thought, 'can he both walk and talk?' +Soon she heard the bolt turning in the door. It opened, and a pleasant, +elderly woman, with a large bundle of keys at her girdle, entered the +room. + +'And how do you do this morning, my daughter?' she asked. + +'Very well, ma'am. Where am I, ma'am?' + +'You ask where? Then you _are_ well. You haven't been for a long, long +time, my child.' + +'And _where_ am I, ma'am?' + +'Why, you are here--at Bloomingdale.' + +'How long have I been here?' + +'Let me see; it must be near fifteen months, now.' + +'And who brought me?' + +'A vessel captain. He said that just as he was hauling out of the dock +at Boston, you jumped into the water with your child. One of his men +sprang overboard and saved you. The vessel couldn't put back, so he +brought you here.' + +'Merciful heaven! did I do that?' + +'Yes. You must have been sorely troubled, my child. But never mind--it +is all over now. But hasn't Franky grown? Isn't he a handsome boy? Come +here to grandma, my baby.' And the good woman sat down on a chair, while +the little fellow ran to her, put his small arms around her neck, and +kissed her over and over again. Children are intuitive judges of +character; no really bad man or woman ever had the love of a child. + +'Yes, he _has_ grown. You call him Franky, do you?' + +'Yes; we didn't know his name. What had you named him?' + +'John Hallet.' + +As she spoke those words, a sharp pang shot through her heart. It was +well that her child had another name! + +She was soon sufficiently recovered to leave the asylum. By the kind +offices of the matron, she got employment in a cap-factory, and a plain +but comfortable boarding-place in the lower part of the city. She worked +at the shop, and left Franky during the day with her landlady, a +kind-hearted but poor woman. Her earnings were but three dollars a week, +and their board was two and a quarter; but on the balance she contrived +to furnish herself and her child with clothes. The only luxury she +indulged in was an occasional _walk_, on Sunday to Bloomingdale, to see +her good friend the kind-hearted matron. + +Thus things went on for two years; and if not happy, she was at least +comfortable. Her father never relented; but her aunt wrote her often, +and there was comfort in the thought that, at least, one of her early +friends had not cast her off. The good lady, too, sent her now and again +small remittances, but they came few and far between; for as the pious +woman grew older, her heart gradually returned to its first love--the +poor heathen. + +To Kate Russell Fanny wrote as soon she left the asylum, telling her of +all that had happened as far as she knew, and thanking her for all her +goodness and kindness to her. She waited some weeks, but no answer came; +then she wrote again, but still no answer came, though that time she +waited two or three months. Fearing then that something had befallen +her, she mustered courage to write Mr. Russell. Still she got no reply, +and she reluctantly concluded--though she had not asked them for +aid--that they had ceased to feel interested in her. + +'They had not, madam. Kate has often spoken very kindly of you. She +wanted to come here to-day, but I did not know this, and I could not +bring her _here_!' + +She looked at me with a strange surprise. Her eyes lighted, and her face +beamed, as she said: 'And you know _her_, too!' + +'Know her! She is to be my wife very soon.' + +She wept as she said: 'And you will tell her how much I love her--how +grateful I am to her?' + +'I will,' I replied. I did not tell the poor girl, as I might have done, +that Hallet had at that time access to Mr. Russell's mails, and that, +knowing her hand-writing, he had undoubtedly intercepted her letters. + +After a long pause, she resumed her story. + +At the end of those two years, a financial panic swept over the country, +prostrating the great houses, and sending want and suffering into the +attics--not homes, for they have none--of the poor sewing-women. The +firm that employed her failed, and Fanny was thrown out of work. She +went to her good friend the matron, who interested some 'benevolent' +ladies in her behalf, and they procured her shirts to make at +twenty-five cents apiece! She could hardly do enough of them to pay her +board; but she could do the work at home with Franky, and that was a +comfort, for he was growing to be a bright, intelligent, affectionate +boy. + +About this time, her aunt and the good matron died. She mourned for them +sincerely, for they were all the friends she had. + +The severe times affected her landlady. Being unable to pay her rent, +she was sold out by the sheriff, and Fanny had to seek other lodgings. +She then took a little room by herself, and lived alone. + +The death of the matron was a great calamity to her, for her +'benevolent' friends soon lost interest in her, and took from her the +poor privilege of making shirts at twenty-five cents apiece! When this +befell her, she had but four dollars and twenty cents in the world. This +she made furnish food to herself and her child for four long weeks, +while she vainly sought for work. She offered to do any thing--to sew, +scrub, cook, wash--any thing; but no! there was nothing for +her--NOTHING! She must drain the cup to the very dregs, that the +vengeance of God--and He would not be just if He did not take terrible +vengeance for crime like his--might sink John Hallet to the lowest hell! + +For four days she had not tasted food. Her child was sick. She had +_begged_ a few crumbs for him, but even _he_ had eaten nothing all day. +Then the tempter came, and--why need I say it?--she sinned. Turn not +away from her, O you, her sister, who have never known a want or felt a +woe! Turn not away. It was not for herself; she would have died--gladly +have died! It was for her sick, starving child that she did it. Could +she, _should_ she have seen him STARVE? + +Some months after that, she noticed in the evening paper, among the +arrivals at the Astor House, the name of John Hallet. That night she +went to him. She was shown to his room, and rapping at the door, was +asked to 'walk in.' She stepped inside and stood before him. He sprang +from his seat, and told her to leave him. She begged him to hear +her--for only one moment to hear her. He stamped on the floor in his +rage, and told her again to go! She did not go, for she told him of the +pit of infamy into which she had fallen, and she prayed him, as he hoped +for heaven, as he loved his own child, to save her! Then, with terrible +curses, he opened the door, laid his hands upon her, and--thrust her +from the room! + +Why should I tell how, step by step, she went down; how want came upon +her; how a terrible disease fastened its fangs on her vitals; how Death +walked with her up and down Broadway in the gas-light; how, in her very +hours of shame, there came to her visions of the innocent +past--thoughts of what she MIGHT HAVE BEEN and of what SHE WAS? The mere +recital of such misery harrows the very soul; and, O God! what must be +the REALITY! + +As she finished the tale which, in broken sentences, with long pauses +and many tears, she had given me, I rose from my seat, and pacing the +room, while the hot tears ran from my eyes, I said; 'Rest easy, my poor +girl! As sure as God lives, you shall be avenged. John Hallet shall feel +the misery he has made you feel. I will pull him down--down so low, that +the very beggars shall hoot at him in the streets!' + +'Oh! no; do not harm him! Leave him to God. He may yet repent!' + +The long exertion had exhausted her. The desire to tell me her story had +sustained her; but when she had finished, she sank rapidly. I felt of +her pulse--it scarcely beat; I passed my hand up her arm--it was icy +cold to the elbow! She was indeed dying. Giving her some of the cordial, +I called her child. + +When I returned, she took each of us by the hand, and said to Franky: +'My child--your mother is going away--from you. Be a good boy--love this +gentleman--he will take care of you!' Then to me she said: 'Be kind to +him, sir. He is--a good child!' + +'Have comfort, madam, he shall be my son. Kate will be a mother to him!' + +'Bless you! bless her! A mother's blessing--will be on you both! The +blessing of God--will be on you--and if the dead can come back--to +comfort those they love--I will come back--and comfort _you_!' + +I do not know--I can not know till the veil which hides her world from +ours, is lifted from my eyes, but there have been times--many +times--since she said that, when Kate and I have thought she was KEEPING +HER WORD! + +For a half-hour she lay without speaking, still holding our hands in +hers. Then, in a low tone--so low that I had to bend down to hear--she +said: + +'Oh! is it not beautiful! Don't you hear? And look! oh! look! And my +mother, too! Oh! it is too bright for such as I!' + +The heavenly gates had opened to her! She had caught a vision of the +better land! + +In a moment she said: + +'Farewell my friend--my child--I will come----' Then a low sound +rattled in her throat, and she passed away, just as the last rays of the +winter sun streamed through the low window. One of its bright beams +rested on her face, and lingered there till we laid her away forever. + +And now, as I sit with Kate on this grassy mound, this mild summer +afternoon, and write these lines, we talk together of her short, sad +life, of her calm, peaceful death, and floating down through the long +years, comes to us the blessing of her pure, redeemed spirit, pleasant +as the breath of the flowers that are growing on her grave. We look up, +and, through our thick falling tears, read again the words which we +placed over her in the long ago: + + FRANCES MANDELL: + + Aged 23. + + SHE SUFFERED AND SHE DIED. + + WEEP FOR HER. + + + + +TAKE CARE! + + + When the blades of shears are biting, + Finger not their edges keen; + When man and wife are fighting, + He faces ill who comes between. + JOHN BULL, in our grief delighting, + Take care how you intervene! + + + + +SHOULDER-STRAPS; + +OR, MEN, MANNERS, AND MOTIVES IN 1862. + + +CHAPTER I. + + INTRODUCTORY AND EPISODICAL--MEASURING-WORMS, DUSSELDORF PICTURES, + AND PARISIAN FORTUNE-TELLERS. + +This is going to be an odd jumble. + +Without being an odd jumble, it could not possibly reflect American life +and manners at the present time with any degree of fidelity; for the +foundations of the old in society have been broken up as effectually, +within the past two years, as were those of the great deep at the time +of Noah's flood, and the disruption has not taken place long enough ago +for the new to have assumed any appearance of stability. The old deities +of fashion have been swept away in the flood of revolution, and the new +which are eventually to take their place have scarcely yet made +themselves apparent through the general confusion. The millionaire of +two years ago, intent at that time on the means by which the revenues +from his brown-stone houses and pet railroad stocks could be spent to +the most showy advantage, has become the struggling man of to-day, +intent upon keeping up appearances, and happy if diminished and doubtful +rents can even be made to meet increasing taxes. The struggling man of +that time has meanwhile sprung into fortune and position, through lucky +adventures in government transportations or army contracts; and the +jewelers of Broadway and Chestnut street are busy resetting the diamonds +of decayed families, to sparkle on brows and bosoms that only a little +while ago beat with pride at an added weight of California paste or +Kentucky rock-crystal. The most showy equipages that have this year been +flashing at Newport and Saratoga, were never seen between the +bathing-beach and Fort Adams, or between Congress Spring and the Lake, +in the old days; and if opera should ever revive, and the rich notes of +melody repay the _impresario_, as they enrapture the audience at the +Academy, there will be new faces in the most prominent boxes, almost as +_outre_ and unaccustomed in their appearance there as was that of the +hard-featured Western President, framed in a shock head and a turn-down +collar, meeting the gaze of astonished Murray Hill, when he passed an +hour here on his way to the inauguration. + +Quite as notable a change has taken place in personal reputation. Many +of the men on whom the country depended as most likely to prove able +defenders in the day of need, have not only discovered to the world +their worthlessness, but filled up the fable of the man who leaned upon +a reed, by fatally piercing those whom they had betrayed to their fall. +Bubble-characters have burst, and high-sounding phrases have been +exploded. Men whose education and antecedents should have made them +brave and true, have shown themselves false and cowardly--impotent for +good, and active only for evil. Unconsidered nobodies have meanwhile +sprung forth from the mass of the people, and equally astonished +themselves and others by the power, wisdom and courage they have +displayed. In cabinet and camp, in army and navy, in the editorial chair +and in the halls of eloquence, the men from whom least was expected have +done most, and those upon whom the greatest expectations had been +founded have only given another proof of the fallacy of all human +calculations. All has been change, all has been transition, in the +estimation men have held of themselves, and the light in which they +presented themselves to each other. + +Opinions of duties and recognitions of necessities have known a change +not less remarkable. What yesterday we believed to be fallacy, to-day we +know to be truth. What seemed the fixed and immutable purpose of God +only a few short months ago, we have already discovered to have been +founded only in human passion or ambition. What seemed eternal has +passed away, and what appeared to be evanescent has assumed stability. +The storm has been raging around us, and doing its work not the less +destructively because we failed to perceive that we were passing through +any thing more threatening than a summer shower. While we have stood +upon the bank of the swelling river, and pointed to some structure of +old rising on the bank, declaring that not a stone could be moved until +the very heavens should fall, little by little the foundations have been +undermined, and the full crash of its falling has first awoke us from +our security. That without which we said that the nation could not live, +has fallen and been destroyed; and yet the nation does not die, but +gives promise of a better and more enduring life. What we cherished we +have lost; what we did not ask or expect has come to us; the effete old +is passing away, and out of the ashes of its decay is springing forth +the young and vigorous new. Change, transition, every where and in all +things: how can society fail to be disrupted, and who can speak, write, +or think with the calm decorum of by-gone days? + +All this is obtrusively philosophical, of course, and correspondingly +out of place. But it may serve as a sort of forlorn hope--mental food +for powder--while the narrative reserve is brought forward; and there is +a dim impression on the mind of the writer that it may be found to have +some connection with that which is necessarily to follow. + +So let the odd jumble be prepared, perhaps with ingredients as +incongruous as those which at present compose what we used to call the +republic, and as unevenly distributed as have been honors and emoluments +during a struggle which should have found every man in his place, and +every national energy employed to its best purpose. + +I was crossing the City Hall Park to dinner at Delmonico's, one +afternoon early in July, in company with a friend who had spent some +years in Europe, and only recently returned. He may be called Ned +Martin, for the purposes of this narration. He had left the country in +its days of peace and prosperity, a frank, whole-souled young artist, +his blue eyes clear as the day, and his faith in humanity unbounded. He +had resided for a long time at Paris, and at other periods been +sojourning at Rome, Florence, Vienna, Dusseldorf, and other places where +art studies called him or artist company invited him. He had come back +to his home and country after the great movements of the war were +inaugurated, and when the great change which had been initiated was most +obvious to an observing eye. I had heard of his arrival in New York, but +failed to meet him, and not long after heard that he had gone down to +visit the lines of our army on the Potomac. Then I had heard of his +return some weeks after, and eventually I had happened upon him drinking +a good-will glass with a party of friends at one of the popular +down-town saloons, when stepping in for a post-prandial cigar. The +result of that meeting had been a promise that we would dine together +one evening, and the after-result was, that we were crossing the Park to +keep that promise. + +I have said that Ned Martin left this country a frank, blue-eyed, +happy-looking young artist, who seemed to be without a care or a +suspicion. It had only needed a second glance at his face, on the day +when I first met him at the bar of the drinking-saloon, to know that a +great change had fallen upon him. He was yet too young for age to have +left a single furrow upon his face; not a fleck of silver had yet +touched his brown hair, nor had his fine, erect form been bowed by +either over-labor or dissipation. Yet he was changed, and the second +glance showed that the change was in the _eyes_. Amid the clear blue +there lay a dark, sombre shadow, such as only shows itself in eyes that +have been turned _inward_. We usually say of the wearer of such eyes, +after looking into them a moment, 'That man has studied much;' 'has +suffered much;' or, '_he is a spiritualist_.' By the latter expression, +we mean that he looks more or less beneath the surface of events that +meet him in the world--that he is more or less a student of the +spiritual in mentality, and of the supernatural in cause and effect. +Such eyes do not stare, they merely gaze. When they look at you, they +look at something else through you and behind you, of which you may or +may not be a part. + +Let me say here, (this chapter being professedly episodical,) that the +painter who can succeed in transferring to canvas that expression of +_seeing more than is presented to the physical eye_, has achieved a +triumph over great difficulties. Frequent visitors to the old Dusseldorf +Gallery will remember two instances, perhaps by the same painter, of the +eye being thus made to reveal the inner thought and a life beyond that +passing at the moment. The first and most notable is in the 'Charles the +Second Fleeing from the Battle of Worcester.' The king and two nobles +are in the immediate foreground, in flight, while far away the sun is +going down in a red glare behind the smoke of battle, the lurid flames +of the burning town, and the royal standard just fluttering down from +the battlements of a castle lost by the royal arms at the very close of +Cromwell's 'crowning mercy.' Through the smoke of the middle distance +can be dimly seen dusky forms in flight, or in the last hopeless +conflict. Each of the nobles at the side of the fugitive king is heavily +armed, with sword in hand, mounted on heavy, galloping horses going at +high speed; and each is looking out anxiously, with head turned aside as +he flies, for any danger which may menace--not himself, but the +sovereign. Charles Stuart, riding between them, is mounted upon a dark, +high-stepping, pure-blooded English horse. He wears the peaked hat of +the time, and his long hair--that which afterward became so notorious in +the masks and orgies of Whitehall, and in the prosecution of his amours +in the purlieus of the capital--floats out in wild dishevelment from his +shoulders. He is dressed in the dark velvet, short cloak, and broad, +pointed collar peculiar to pictures of himself and his unfortunate +father; shows no weapon, and is leaning ungracefully forward, as if +outstripping the hard-trotting speed of his horse. But the true interest +of this figure, and of the whole picture, is concentrated in the eyes. +Those sad, dark eyes, steady and immovable in their fixed gaze, reveal +whole pages of history and whole years of suffering. The fugitive king +is not thinking of his flight, of any dangers that may beset him, of the +companions at his side, or even of where he shall lay his periled head +in the night that is coming. Those eyes have shut away the physical and +the real, and through the mists of the future they are trying to read +the great question of _fate_! Worcester is lost, and with it a kingdom: +is he to be henceforth a crownless king and a hunted fugitive, or has +the future its compensations? This is what the fixed and glassy eyes are +saying to every beholder, and there is not one who does not answer the +question with a mental response forced by that mute appeal of suffering +thought: 'The king shall have his own again!' + +The second picture in the same collection is much smaller, and commands +less attention; but it tells another story of the same great struggle +between King and Parliament, through the agency of the same feature. A +wounded cavalier, accompanied by one of his retainers, also wounded, is +being forced along on foot, evidently to imprisonment, by one of +Cromwell's Ironsides and a long-faced, high-hatted Puritan cavalry-man, +both on horseback, and a third on foot, with _musquetoon_ on shoulder. +The cavalier's garments are rent and blood-stained, and there is a +bloody handkerchief binding his brow and telling how, when his house was +surprised and his dependents slaughtered, he himself fought till he was +struck down, bound and overpowered. He strides sullenly along, looking +neither to the right nor the left; and the triumphant captors behind him +know nothing of the story that is told in his face. The eyes, fixed and +steady in the shadow of the bloody bandage, tell nothing of the pain of +his wound or the tension of the cords which are binding his crossed +wrists. In their intense depth, which really seems to convey the +impression of looking through forty feet of the still but dangerous +waters of Lake George and seeing the glimmering of the golden sand +beneath, we read of a burned house and an outraged family, and we see a +prophecy written there, that if his mounted guards could read, they +would set spurs and flee away like the wind--a calm, silent, but +irrevocable prophecy: 'I can bear all this, for my time is coming! Not a +man of all these will live, not a roof-tree that shelters them but will +be in ashes, when I take my revenge!' Not a gazer but knows, through +those marvelous eyes alone, that the day is coming that he _will_ have +his revenge, and that the subject of pity is the victorious Roundhead +instead of the wounded and captive cavalier! + +I said, before this long digression broke the slender chain of +narration, that some strange, spiritualistic shadow lay in the eyes of +Ned Martin; and I could have sworn, without the possibility of an error, +that he had become an habitual reader of the inner life, and almost +beyond question a communicant with influences which some hold to be +impossible and others unlawful. + +The long measuring-worms hung pendent from their gossamer threads, as we +passed through the Park, as they have done, destroying the foliage, in +almost every city of the Northern States. One brushed my face as I +passed, and with the stick in my hand I struck the long threads of +gossamer and swept several of the worms to the ground. One, a very large +and long one, happened to fall on Martin's shoulder, lying across the +blue flannel of his coat in the exact position of a shoulder-strap. + +'I say, Martin,' I said, 'I have knocked down one of the worms upon +_you_.' + +'Have you?' he replied listlessly, 'then be good enough to brush it off, +if it does not crawl off itself. I do not like worms.' + +'I do not know who _does_ like them,' I said, 'though I suppose, being +'worms of the dust,' we ought to bear affection instead of disgust +toward our fellow-reptiles. But, funnily enough,' and I held him still +by the shoulder for a moment to contemplate the oddity, 'this +measuring-worm, which is a very big one, has fallen on your shoulder, +and seems disposed to remain there, in the very position of a +_shoulder-strap_! You must belong to the army!' + +It is easy to imagine what would be the quick, convulsive writhing +motion with which one would shrink aside and endeavor to get +instantaneously away from it, when told that an asp, a centipede or a +young rattlesnake was lying on the shoulder, and ready to strike its +deadly fangs into the neck. But it is not easy to imagine that even a +nervous woman, afraid of a cockroach and habitually screaming at a +mouse, would display any extraordinary emotion on being told that a +harmless measuring-worm had fallen upon the shoulder of her dress. What +was my surprise, then, to see the face of Martin, that had been so +impassive the moment before when told that the worm had fallen upon his +coat, suddenly assume an expression of the most awful fear and agony, +and his whole form writhe with emotion, as he shrunk to one side in the +effort to eject the intruder instantaneously! + +'Good God! Off with it--quick! Quick, for heaven's sake!' he cried, in a +frightened, husky voice that communicated his terror to me, and almost +sinking to the ground as he spoke. + +Of course I instantly brushed the little reptile away; but it was quite +a moment before he assumed an erect position, and I saw two or three +quick shudders pass over his frame, such as I had not seen since, many a +long year before, I witnessed the horrible tortures of a strong man +stricken with hydrophobia. Then he asked, in a voice low, quavering and +broken: + +'Is it gone?' + +'Certainly it is!' I said. 'Why, Martin, what under heaven can have +affected you in this manner? I told you that I had knocked a worm on +your coat, and you did not appear to heed it any more than if it had +been a speck of dust. It was only when I mentioned the _shape_ it had +assumed, that you behaved so unaccountably! What does it mean? Are you +afraid of worms, or only of _shoulder-straps_?' And I laughed at the +absurdity of the latter supposition. + +'Humph!' said Martin, who seemed to have recovered his equanimity, but +not shaken off the impression. 'You laugh. Perhaps you will laugh more +when I tell you that it was not the worm, _as_ a worm, of which I was +thinking at all, and that my terror--yes, I need not mince words, I was +for the moment in abject terror--had to do altogether with the shape +that little crawling pest had assumed, and the part of my coat on which +he had taken a fancy to lodge himself!' + +'No, I should not laugh,' I said; 'but I _should_ ask an explanation of +what seems very strange and unaccountable. Shall I lacerate a feeling, +or tread upon ground made sacred by a grief, if I do so?' + +'Not at all,' was the reply. 'In fact, I feel at this moment very much +as the Ancient Mariner may have done the moment before he met the +wedding-guest--when, in fact, he had nobody to button-hole, and felt the +strong necessity of boring some one!' There was a tone of gayety in this +reply, which told me how changeable and mercurial my companion could be; +and I read an evident understanding of the character and mission of the +noun-substantive 'bore,' which assured me that he was the last person in +the world likely to play such a part. 'However,' he concluded, 'wait a +bit. When we have concluded the raspberries, and wet our lips with +green-seal, I will tell you all that I myself know of a very singular +episode in an odd life.' + +Half an hour after, the conditions of which he spoke had been +accomplished, over the marble at Delmonico's, and he made me the +following very singular relation: + +'I had returned from a somewhat prolonged stay at Vienna,' he said, 'to +Paris, late in 1860. During the fall and winter of that year I spent a +good deal of time at the Louvre, making a few studies, and satisfying +myself as to some identities that had been called in question during my +rambles through the Imperial Gallery at Vienna. I lodged in the little +Rue Marie Stuart, not far from the Rue Montorgeuil, and only two or +three minutes' walk from the Louvre, having a baker with a pretty wife +for my landlord, and a cozy little room in which three persons could sit +comfortably, for my domicil. As I did not often have more than two +visitors, my room was quite sufficient; and as I spent a large +proportion of my evenings at other places than my lodgings, the space +was three quarters of the time more than I needed. + +'I do not know that I can have any objection to your knowing, before I +go any further, that I am and have been for some years a believer in +that of which Hamlet speaks when he says: 'There are more things in +heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.' You +may call me a _Spiritualist_, if you like, for I have no reverence for +or aversion to names. I do not call _myself_ so; I only say that I +believe that more things come to us in the way of knowledge, than we +read, hear, see, taste, smell, or feel with the natural and physical +organs. I know, from the most irrefragable testimony, that there are +communications made between one and another, when too far apart to reach +each other by any of the recognized modes of intercourse; though how or +why they are made I have no definite knowledge. Electricity--that +'tongs with which God holds the world'--as a strong but odd thinker once +said in my presence, may be the medium of communication; but even this +must be informed by a living and sentient spirit, or it can convey +nothing. People learn what they would not otherwise know, through +mediums which they do not recognize and by processes which they can not +explain; and to know this is to have left the beaten track of old +beliefs, and plunged into a maze of speculation, which probably makes +madmen of a hundred while it is making a wise man of _one_. But I am +wandering too far and telling you nothing. + +'One of my few intimates in Paris, a young Prussian by the name of +Adolph Von Berg, had a habit of visiting mediums, clairvoyants, and, not +to put too fine a point upon it, fortune-tellers. Though I had been in +company with clairvoyants in many instances, I had never, before my +return to Paris in the late summer of 1860, entered any one of those +places in which professional fortune-tellers carried on their business. +It was early in September, I think, that at the earnest solicitation of +Von Berg, who had been reading and smoking with me at my lodgings, I +went with him, late in the evening, to a small two-story house in the +Rue La Reynie Ogniard, a little street down the Rue Saint Denis toward +the quays of the Seine, and running from Saint Denis across to the Rue +Saint Martin. The house seemed to me to be one of the oldest in Paris, +although built of wood; and the wrinkled and crazy appearance of the +front was eminently suggestive of the face of an old woman on which time +had long been plowing furrows to plant disease. The interior of the +house, when we entered it by the dingy and narrow hallway, that night, +well corresponded with the exterior. A tallow-candle in a tin sconce was +burning on the wall, half hiding and half revealing the grime on the +plastering, the cobwebs in the corners, and the rickety stairs by which +it might be supposed that the occupants ascended to the second story. + +'My companion tinkled a small bell that lay upon a little uncovered +table in the hall, (the outer door having been entirely unfastened, to +all appearance,) and a slattern girl came out from an inner room. On +recognizing my companion, who had visited the house before, she led the +way without a word to the same room she had herself just quitted. There +was nothing remarkable in this. A shabby table, and two or three still +more shabby chairs, occupied the room, and a dark wax-taper stood on the +table, while at the side opposite the single window a curtain of some +dark stuff shut in almost one entire side of the apartment. We took +seats on the rickety chairs, and waited in silence, Adolph informing me +that the etiquette (strange name for such a place) of the house did not +allow of conversation, not with the proprietors, carried on in that +apartment sacred to the divine mysteries. + +'Perhaps fifteen minutes had elapsed, and I had grown fearfully tired of +waiting, when the corner of the curtain was suddenly thrown back, and +the figure of a woman stood in the space thus created. Every thing +behind her seemed to be in darkness; but some description of bright +light, which did not show through the curtain at all, and which seemed +almost dazzling enough to be Calcium or Drummond, shed its rays directly +upon her side-face, throwing every feature from brow to chin into bold +relief, and making every fold of her dark dress visible. But I scarcely +saw the dress, the face being so remarkable beyond any thing I had ever +witnessed. I had looked to see an old, wrinkled hag--it being the +general understanding that all witches and fortune-tellers must be long +past the noon of life; but instead, I saw a woman who could not have +been over thirty-five or forty, with a figure of regal magnificence, and +a face that would have been, but for one circumstance, beautiful beyond +description. Apelles never drew and Phidias never chiseled nose or brow +of more classic perfection, and I have never seen the bow of Cupid in +the mouth of any woman more ravishingly shown than in that feature of +the countenance of the sorceress. + +'I said that but for one circumstance, that face would have been +beautiful beyond description. And yet no human eye ever looked upon a +face more hideously fearful than it was in reality. Even a momentary +glance could not be cast upon it without a shudder, and a longer gaze +involved a species of horrible fascination which affected one like a +nightmare. You do not understand yet what was this remarkable and most +hideous feature. I can scarcely find words to describe it to you so that +you can catch the full force of the idea--I must try, however. You have +often seen Mephistopheles in his flame-colored dress, and caught some +kind of impression that the face was of the same hue, though the fact +was that it was of the natural color, and only affected by the lurid +character of the dress and by the Satanic penciling of the eyebrows! You +have? Well, this face was really what that seemed for the moment to be. +It was redder than blood-red as fire, and yet so strangely did the +flame-color play through it that you knew no paint laid upon the skin +could have produced the effect. It almost seemed that the skin and the +whole mass of flesh were transparent, and that the red color came from +some kind of fire or light within, as the red bottle in a druggist's +window might glow when you were standing full in front of it, and the +gas was turned on to full height behind. Every feature--brow, nose, +lips, chin, even the eyes themselves, and their very pupil seemed to be +pervaded and permeated by this lurid flame; and it was impossible for +the beholder to avoid asking himself whether there were indeed spirits +of flame--salamandrines--who sometimes existed out of their own element +and lived and moved as mortals. + +'Have I given you a strange and fearful picture? Be sure that I have not +conveyed to you one thousandth part of the impression made upon myself, +and that until the day I die that strange apparition will remain stamped +upon the tablets of my mind. Diabolical beauty! infernal ugliness!--I +would give half my life, be it longer or shorter, to be able to explain +whence such things can come, to confound and stupefy all human +calculation!' + + +CHAPTER II. + + MORE OF PARISIAN FORTUNE-TELLERS--THE VISIONS OF THE WHITE + MIST--REBELLION, GRIEF, HOPE, BRAVERY AND DESPAIR + +It was after a second bottle of green-seal had flashed out its sparkles +into the crystal, that Ned Martin drew a long breath like that drawn by +a man discharging a painful and necessary duty, and resumed his story: + +'You may some time record this for the benefit of American men and +women,' he went on, 'and if you are wise you will deal chiefly in the +language to which they are accustomed. I speak the French, of course, +nearly as well and as readily as the English; but I _think_ in my native +tongue, as most men continue to do, I believe, no matter how many +dialects they acquire; and I shall not interlard this little narrative +with any French words that can just as well be translated into our +vernacular. + +'Well, as I was saying, there stood my horribly beautiful fiend, and +there I sat spell-bound before her. As for Adolph, though he had told me +nothing in advance of the peculiarities of her appearance, he had been +fully aware of them, of course, and I had the horrible surprise all to +myself. I think the sorceress saw the mingled feeling in my face, and +that a smile blended of pride and contempt contorted the proud features +and made the ghastly face yet more ghastly for one moment. If so, the +expression soon passed away, and she stood, as before, the incarnation +of all that was terrible and mysterious. At length, still retaining her +place and fixing her eyes upon Von Berg, she spoke, sharply, brusquely, +and decidedly: + +''You are here again! What do you want?' + +''I wish to introduce my friend, the Baron Charles Denmore, of England,' +answered Von Berg, 'who wishes----' + +''Nothing!' said the sorceress, the word coming from her lips with an +unmistakably hissing sound. He wants nothing, and he is _not_ the Baron +Charles Denmore! He comes from far away, across the sea, and he would +not have come here to-night but that you insisted upon it! Take him +away--go away yourself--and never let me see you again unless you have +something to ask or you wish me to do you an injury!' + +''But----' began Yon Berg. + +''Not another word!' said the sorceress, 'I have said. Go, before you +repent having come at all!' + +''Madame,' I began to say, awed out of the feeling at least of equality +which I should have felt to be proper under such circumstances, and only +aware that Adolph, and possibly myself, had incurred the enmity of a +being so near to the supernatural as to be at least dangerous--'Madame, +I hope that you will not think----' + +'But here she cut _me_ short, as she had done Von Berg the instant +before. + +''Hope nothing, young artist!' she said, her voice perceptibly less +harsh and brusque than it had been when speaking to my companion. 'Hope +nothing and ask nothing until you may have occasion; then come to me.' + +''And then?' + +''Then I will answer every question you may think proper to put to me. +Stay! you may have occasion to visit me sooner than you suppose, or I +may have occasion to force knowledge upon you that you will not have the +boldness to seek. If so, I shall send for you. Now go, both of you!' + +'The dark curtain suddenly fell, and the singular vision faded with the +reflected light which had filled the room. The moment after, I heard the +shuffling feet of the slattern girl coming to show us out of the room, +but, singularly enough, as you will think, not out of the _house_! +Without a word we followed her--Adolph, who knew the customs of the +place, merely slipping a five-franc piece into her hand, and in a moment +more we were out in the street and walking up the Rue Saint Denis. It is +not worth while to detail the conversation which followed between us as +we passed up to the Rue Marie Stuart, I to my lodgings and Adolph to his +own, further on, close to the Rue Vivienne, and not far from the +Boulevard Montmartre. Of course I asked him fifty questions, the replies +to which left me quite as much in the dark as before. He knew, he said, +and hundreds of other persons in Paris knew, the singularity of the +personal appearance of the sorceress, and her apparent power of +divination, but neither he nor they had any knowledge of her origin. He +had been introduced at her house several months before, and had asked +questions affecting his family in Prussia and the chances of descent of +certain property, the replies to which had astounded him. He had heard +of her using marvelous and fearful incantations, but had never himself +witnessed any thing of them. In two or three instances, before the +present, he had taken friends to the house and introduced them under any +name which he chose to apply to them for the time, and the sorceress had +never before chosen to call him to account for the deception, though, +according to the assurances of his friends after leaving the house, she +had never failed to arrive at the truth of their nationalities and +positions in life. There must have been something in myself or my +circumstances, he averred, which had produced so singular an effect upon +the witch, (as he evidently believed her to be,) and he had the +impression that at no distant day I should again hear from her. That was +all, and so we parted, I in any other condition of mind than that +promising sleep, and really without closing my eyes, except for a moment +or two at a time, during the night which followed. When I did attempt to +force myself into slumber, a red spectre stood continually before me, an +unearthly light seemed to sear my covered eyeballs, and I awoke with a +start. Days passed before I sufficiently wore away the impression to be +comfortable, and at least two or three weeks before my rest became again +entirely unbroken. + +'You must be partially aware with what anxiety we Americans temporarily +sojourning on the other side of the Atlantic, who loved the country we +had left behind on this, watched the succession of events which preceded +and accompanied the Presidential election of that year. Some suppose +that a man loses his love for his native land, or finds it comparatively +chilled within his bosom, after long residence abroad. The very opposite +is the case, I think! I never knew what the old flag was, until I saw it +waving from the top of an American consulate abroad, or floating from +the gaff of one of our war-vessels, when I came down the mountains to +some port on the Mediterranean. It had been merely red, white and blue +bunting, at home, where the symbols of our national greatness were to be +seen on every hand: it was the _only_ symbol of our national greatness +when we were looking at it from beyond the sea; and the man whose eyes +will not fill with tears and whose throat will not choke a little with +overpowering feeling, when catching sight of the Stars and Stripes where +they only can be seen to remind him of the glory of the country of which +he is a part, is unworthy the name of patriot or of man! + +'But to return: Where was I? Oh! I was remarking with what interest we +on the other side of the water watched the course of affairs at home +during that year when the rumble of distant thunder was just heralding +the storm. You are well aware that without extensive and long-continued +connivance on the part of sympathizers among the leading people of +Europe--England and France especially--secession could never have been +accomplished so far as it has been; and there never could have been any +hope of its eventual success if there had been no hope of one or both +these two countries bearing it up on their strong and unscrupulous arms. +The leaven of foreign aid to rebellion was working even then, both in +London and Paris; and perhaps we had opportunities over the water for a +nearer guess at the peril of the nation, than you could have had in the +midst of your party political squabbles at home. + +'During the months of September and October, when your Wide-Awakes on +the one hand, and your conservative Democracy on the other, were +parading the streets with banners and music, as they or their +predecessors had done in so many previous contests, and believing that +nothing worse could be involved than a possible party defeat and some +bad feelings, we, who lived where revolutions were common, thought that +we discovered the smoldering spark which would be blown to revolution +here. The disruption of the Charleston Convention and through it of the +Democracy; the bold language and firm resistance of the Republicans; the +well-understood energy of the uncompromising Abolitionists, and the less +defined but rabid energy of the Southern fire-eaters: all these were +known abroad and watched with gathering apprehension. American +newspapers, and the extracts made from them by the leading journals of +France and Europe, commanded more attention among the Americo-French and +English than all other excitements of the time put together. + +'Then followed what you all know--the election, with its radical result +and the threats which immediately succeeded, that 'Old Abe Lincoln' +should never live to be inaugurated! 'He shall not!' cried the South. +'He shall!' replied the North. To us who knew something of the Spanish +knife and the Italian stiletto, the probabilities seemed to be that he +would never live to reach Washington. Then the mutterings of the thunder +grew deeper and deeper, and some disruption seemed inevitable, evident +to us far away, while you at home, it seemed, were eating and drinking, +marrying and giving in marriage, holding gala-days and enjoying +yourselves generally, on the brink of an arousing volcano from which the +sulphurous smoke already began to ascend to the heavens! So time passed +on; autumn became winter, and December was rolling away. + +'I was sitting with half-a-dozen friends in the chess-room at Very's, +about eleven o'clock on the night of the twentieth of December, talking +over some of the marvelous successes which had been won by Paul Morphy +when in Paris, and the unenviable position in which Howard Staunton had +placed himself by keeping out of the lists through evident fear of the +New-Orleanian, when Adolph Von Berg came behind me and laid his hand on +my shoulder. + +''Come with me a moment,' he said, 'you are wanted!' + +''Where?' I asked, getting up from my seat and following him to the +door, before which stood a light _coupé_, with its red lights flashing, +the horse smoking, and the driver in his seat. + +''I have been to-night to the Rue la Reynie Ogniard!' he answered. + +''And are you going there again?' I asked, my blood chilling a little +with an indefinable sensation of terror, but a sense of satisfaction +predominating at the opportunity of seeing something more of the +mysterious woman. + +''I am!' he answered, 'and so are _you_! She has sent for you! Come!' + +'Without another word I stepped into the _coupé_, and we were rapidly +whirled away. I asked Adolph how and why I had been summoned; but he +knew nothing more than myself, except that he had visited the sorceress +at between nine and ten that evening, that she had only spoken to him +for an instant, but ordered him to go at once and find his friend, _the +American_, whom he had falsely introduced some months before as the +English baron. He had been irresistibly impressed with the necessity of +obedience, though it would break in upon his own arrangements for the +later evening, (which included an hour at the Chateau Rouge;) had picked +up a _coupé_, looked in for me at two or three places where he thought +me most likely to be at that hour in the evening, and had found me at +Very's, as related. What the sorceress could possibly want of me, he had +no idea more than myself; but he reminded me that she had hinted at the +possible necessity of sending for me at no distant period, and I +remembered the fact too well to need the reminder. + +'It was nearly midnight when we drove down the Rue St. Denis, turned +into La Reynie Ogniard, and drew up at the antiquated door I had once +entered nearly three months earlier. We entered as before, rang the bell +as before, and were admitted into the inner room by the same slattern +girl. I remember at this moment one impression which this person made +upon me--that she did not wash so often as four times a year, and that +the _same old dirt_ was upon her face that had been crusted there at the +time of my previous visit. There seemed no change in the room, except +that _two_ tapers, and each larger than the one I had previously seen, +were burning upon the table. The curtain was down, as before, and when +it suddenly rose, after a few minutes spent in waiting, and the +blood-red woman stood in the vacant space, all seemed so exactly as it +had done on the previous visit, that it would have been no difficult +matter to believe the past three months a mere imagination, and this the +same first visit renewed. + +'The illusion, such as it was, did not last long, however. The sorceress +fixed her eyes full upon me, with the red flame seeming to play through +the eyeballs as it had before done through her cheeks, and said, in a +voice lower, more sad and broken, than it had been when addressing me on +the previous occasion: + +''Young American, I have sent for you, and you have done well to come. +Do not fear----' + +''I do _not_ fear--you, or any one!' I answered, a little piqued that +she should have drawn any such impression from my appearance. I may have +been uttering a fib of magnificent proportions at the moment, but one +has a right to deny cowardice to the last gasp, whatever else he must +admit. + +''You do not? It is well, then!' she said in reply, and in the same low, +sad voice. 'You will have courage, then, perhaps, to see what I will +show you from the land of shadows.' + +''Whom does it concern?' I asked. 'Myself, or some other?' + +''Yourself, and many others--all the world!' uttered the lips of flame. +'It is of your country that I would show you.' + +''My country? God of heaven! What has happened to my country?' broke +from my lips almost before I knew what I was uttering. I suppose the +words came almost like a groan, for I had been deeply anxious over the +state of affairs known to exist at home, and perhaps I can be nearer to +a weeping child when I think of any ill to my own beloved land, than I +could be for any other evil threatened in the world. + +''But a moment more and you shall see!' said the sorceress. Then she +added: 'You have a friend here present. Shall he too look on what I have +to reveal, or will you behold it alone?' + +''Let him see!' I answered. 'My native land may fall into ruin, but she +can never be ashamed!' + +''So let it be, then!' said the sorceress, solemnly. 'Be silent, look, +and learn what is at this moment transpiring in your own land!' + +'Beneath that adjuration I was silent, and the same dread stillness fell +upon my companion. Suddenly the sorceress, still standing in the same +place, waved her right hand in the air, and a strain of low, sad music, +such as the harps of angels may be continually making over the descent +of lost spirits to the pit of suffering, broke upon my ears. Von Berg +too heard it, I know, for I saw him look up in surprise, then apply his +fingers to his ears and test whether his sense of hearing had suddenly +become defective. Whence that strain of music could have sprung I did +not know, nor do I know any better at this moment. I only know that, to +my senses and those of my companion, it was definite as if the thunders +of the sky had been ringing. + +'Then came another change, quite as startling as the music and even more +difficult to explain. The room began to fill with a whitish mist, +transparent in its obscurity, that wrapped the form of the sybil and +finally enveloped her until she appeared to be but a shade. Anon another +and larger room seemed to grow in the midst, with columned galleries and +a rostrum, and hundreds of forms in wild commotion, moving to and fro, +though uttering no sound. At one moment it seemed that I could look +through one of the windows of the phantom building, and I saw the +branches of a palmetto-tree waving in the winter wind. Then amidst and +apparently at the head of all, a white-haired man stood upon the +rostrum, and as he turned down a long scroll from which he seemed to be +reading to the assemblage, I read the words that appeared on the top of +the scroll: 'An ordinance to dissolve the compact heretofore existing +between the several States of the Federal Union, under the name of the +United States of America.' My breath came thick, my eyes filled with +tears of wonder and dismay, and I could see no more. + +''Horror!' I cried. 'Roll away the vision, for it is false! It can not +be that the man lives who could draw an ordinance to dissolve the Union +of the United States of America!' + +''It is so! That has this day been done!' spoke the voice of the +sorceress from within the cloud of white mist. + +''If this is indeed true,' I said, 'show me what is the result, for the +heavens must bow if this work of ruin is accomplished!' + +''Look again, then!' said the voice. The strain of music, which had +partially ceased for a moment, grew louder and sadder again, and I saw +the white mist rolling and changing as if a wind were stirring it. +Gradually again it assumed shape and form; and in the moonlight, before +the Capitol of the nation, its white proportions gleaming in the wintry +ray, the form of Washington stood, the hands clasped, the head bare, +and the eyes cast upward in the mute agony of supplication. + +''All is not lost!' I shouted more than spoke, 'for the Father of his +Country still watches his children, and while he lives in the heavens +and prays for the erring and wandering, the nation may yet be +reclaimed.' + +''It may be so,' said the voice through the mist, 'for look!' + +'Again the strain of music sounded, but now louder and clearer and +without the tone of hopeless sadness. Again the white mists rolled by in +changing forms, and when once more they assumed shape and consistency I +saw great masses of men, apparently in the streets of a large city, +throwing out the old flag from roof and steeple, lifting it to heaven in +attitudes of devotion, and pressing it to their lips with those wild +kisses which a mother gives to her darling child when it has been just +rescued from a deadly peril. + +''The nation lives!' I shouted. 'The old flag is not deserted and the +patriotic heart yet beats in American bosoms! Show me yet more, for the +next must be triumph!' + +''Triumph indeed!' said the voice. 'Behold it and rejoice at it while +there is time!' I shuddered at the closing words, but another change in +the strain of music roused me. It was not sadness now, nor yet the +rising voice of hope, for martial music rung loudly and clearly, and +through it I heard the roar of cannon and the cries of combatants in +battle. As the vision cleared, I saw the armies of the Union in tight +with a host almost as numerous as themselves, but savage, ragged, and +tumultuous, and bearing a mongrel flag that I had never seen before--one +that seemed robbed from the banner of the nation's glory. For a moment +the battle wavered and the forces of the Union seemed driven backward; +then they rallied with a shout, and the flag of stars and stripes was +rebaptized in glory. They pressed the traitors backward at every +turn--they trod rebellion under their heels--they were every where, and +every where triumphant. + +''Three cheers for the Star-Spangled Banner!' I cried, forgetting place +and time in the excitement of the scene. 'Let the world look on and +wonder and admire! I knew the land that the Fathers founded and +Washington guarded could not die! Three cheers--yes, nine--for the +Star-Spangled Banner and the brave old land over which it floats!' + +''Pause!' said the voice, coming out once more from the cloud of white +mist, and chilling my very marrow with the sad solemnity of its tone. +'Look once again!' I looked, and the mists went rolling by as before, +while the music changed to wild discord; and when the sight became clear +again I saw the men of the nation struggling over bags of gold and +quarreling for a black shadow that flitted about in their midst, while +cries of want and wails of despair went up and sickened the heavens! I +closed my eyes and tried to close my ears, but I could not shut out the +voice of the sorceress, saying once more from her shroud of white mist: + +''Look yet again, and for the last time! Behold the worm that gnaws away +the bravery of a nation and makes it a prey for the spoiler!' +Heart-brokenly sad was the music now, as the vision changed once more, +and I saw a great crowd of men, each in the uniform of an officer of the +United States army, clustered around one who seemed to be their chief. +But while I looked I saw one by one totter and fall, and directly I +perceived that _the epaulette or shoulder-strap on the shoulder of each +was a great hideous yellow worm, that gnawed away the shoulder and +palsied the arm and ate into the vitals_. Every second, one fell and +died, making frantic efforts to tear away the reptile from its grasp, +but in vain. Then the white mists rolled away, and I saw the strange +woman standing where she had been when the first vision began. She was +silent, the music was hushed, Adolph Von Berg had fallen hack asleep in +his chair, and drawing out my watch, I discovered that only ten minutes +had elapsed since the sorceress spoke her first word. + +''You have seen all--go!' was her first and last interruption to the +silence. The instant after, the curtain fell. I kicked Von Berg to awake +him, and we left the house. The _coupé_ was waiting in the street and +set me down at my lodgings, after which it conveyed my companion to his. +Adolph did not seem to have a very clear idea of what had occurred, and +my impression is, that he went to sleep the moment the first strain of +music commenced. + +'As for myself, I am not much clearer than Adolph as to how and why I +saw and heard what I know that I did see and hear. I can only say that +on that night of the twentieth December, 1860, the same on which, as it +afterward appeared, the ordinance of secession was adopted at +Charleston, I, in the little old two-story house in the Rue la Reynie +Ogniard, witnessed what I have related. What may be the omens, you may +judge as well as myself. How much of the sybil's prophecy is already +history, you know already. That SHOULDER-STRAPS, which I take to be _the +desire of military show without courage or patriotism_, are destroying +the armies of the republic, I am afraid there is no question. Perhaps +you can imagine why at the moment of hearing that there was a worm on my +shoulder for a shoulder-strap, I for the instant believed that it was +one of the hideous yellow monsters that I saw devouring the best +officers of the nation, and shrunk and shrieked like a whipped child. Is +not that a long story?' Martin concluded, lighting a fresh cigar and +throwing himself back from the table. + +'Very long, and a little mad; but to me absorbingly interesting,' was my +reply, 'And in the hope that it may prove so to others, I shall use it +as a strange, rambling introduction to a recital of romantic events +which have occurred in and about the great city since the breaking out +of the rebellion, having to do with patriotism and cowardice, love, +mischief, and secession, and bearing the title thus suggested.' + +A part of which stipulation is hereby kept, with the promise of the +writer that the remainder shall be faithfully fulfilled in forthcoming +numbers. + + + + +THE CHILDREN IN THE WOOD. + + Tell us--poor gray-haired children that we are-- + Tell us some story of the days afar, + Down shining through the years like sun and star. + + The stories that, when we were very young, + Like golden beads on lips of wisdom hung, + At fireside told or by the cradle sung. + + Not Cinderella with the tiny shoe, + Nor Harsan's carpet that through distance flew, + Nor Jack the Giant-Killer's derring-do. + + Not even the little lady of the Hood, + But something sadder--easier understood-- + The ballad of the Children in the Wood. + + Poor babes! the cruel uncle lives again, + To whom their little voices plead in vain-- + Who sent them forth to be by ruffians slain. + + The hapless agent of the guilt is here-- + From whose seared heart their pleading brought a tear-- + Who could not strike, but fled away in fear. + + And hand in hand the wanderers, left alone, + Through the dense forest make their feeble moan, + Fed on the berries--pillowed on a stone. + + Still hand in hand, till little feet grow sore, + And fails the feeble strength their limbs that bore; + Then they lie down, and feel the pangs no more. + + The stars shine down in pity from the sky; + The night-bird marks their fate with plaintive cry; + The dew-drop wets their parched lips ere they die. + + There clasped they lie--death's poor, unripened sheaves-- + Till the red robin through the tree-top grieves, + And flutters down and covers them with leaves. + + 'Tis an old legend, and a touching one: + What then? Methinks beneath to-morrow's sun + Some deed as heartless will be planned and done. + + Children of older years and sadder fate + Will wander, outcasts, from the great world's gate, + And ne'er return again, though long they wait. + + Through wildering labyrinths that round them close, + In that heart-hunger disappointment knows, + They long may wander ere the night's repose. + + Their feeble voices through the dusk may call, + And on the ears of busy mortals fall, + But who will hear, save God above us all? + + Will wolfish Hates forego their evil work, + Nor Envy's vultures in the branches perk, + Nor Slander's snakes within the verdure lurk? + + And when at last the torch of life grows dim, + Shall sweet birds o'er them chant a burial-hymn, + Or decent pity veil the stiffening limb? + + Thrice happy they, if the old legend stand, + And they are left to wander hand in hand-- + Not driven apart by Eden's blazing brand! + + If, long before the lonely night comes on-- + By tempting berries wildered and withdrawn-- + One does not look and find the other gone; + + If something more of shame, and grief, and wrong + Than that so often told in nursery song, + To their sad history does not belong! + + O lonely wanderers in the great world's wood! + Finding the evil where you seek the good, + Often deceived and seldom understood-- + + Lay to your hearts the plaintive tale of old, + When skies grow threatening or when loves grow cold, + Or something dear is hid beneath the mold! + + For fates are hard, and hearts are very weak, + And roses we have kissed soon leave the cheek, + And what we are, we scarcely dare to speak. + + But something deeper, to reflective eyes, + To-day beneath the sad old story lies, + And all must read if they are truly wise. + + A nation wanders in the deep, dark night, + By cruel hands despoiled of half its might, + And half its truest spirits sick with fright. + + The world is step-dame--scoffing at the strife, + And black assassins, armed with deadly knife, + At every step lurk, striking at its life. + + Shall it be murdered in the gloomy wood? + Tell us, O Parent of the True and Good, + Whose hand for us the fate has yet withstood! + + Shall it lie down at last, all weak and faint, + Its blood dried up with treason's fever-taint, + And offer up its soul in said complaint? + + Or shall the omen fail, and, rooting out + All that has marked its life with fear and doubt, + The child spring up to manhood with a shout? + + So that in other days, when far and wide + Other lost children have for succor cried, + The one now periled may be help and guide? + + Father of all the nations formed of men, + So let it be! Hold us beneath thy ken, + And bring the wanderers to thyself again! + + Pity us all, and give us strength to pray, + And lead us gently down our destined way! + And this is all the children's lips can say. + + + + +NATIONAL UNITY. + + +Pride in the physical grandeur, the magnificent proportions of our +country, has for generations been the master passion of Americans. Never +has the popular voice or vote refused to sustain a policy which looked +to the enlargement of the area or increase of the power of the Republic. +To feel that so vast a river as the Mississippi, having such affluents +as the Missouri and the Ohio, rolled its course entirely through our +territory--that the twenty thousand miles of steamboat navigation on +that river and its tributaries were wholly our own, without touching on +any side our national boundaries--that the Pacific and the Atlantic, the +great lakes and the Gulf of Mexico, were our natural and conceded +frontiers, that their bays and harbors were the refuge of our commerce, +and their rising cities our marts and depots--were incense to our vanity +and stimulants to our love of country. No true American abroad ever +regarded or characterized himself as a New-Yorker, a Virginian, a +Louisianian: he dilated in the proud consciousness of his country's +transcendent growth and wondrous greatness, and confidently anticipated +the day when its flag should float unchallenged from Hudson's Bay to the +Isthmus of Darien, if not to Cape Horn. + +It was this strong instinct of Nationality which rendered the masses so +long tolerant, if not complaisant, toward Slavery and the Slave Power. +Merchants and bankers were bound to their footstool by other and +ignobler ties; but the yeomanry of the land regarded slavery with a +lenient if not absolutely favoring eye, because it existed in fifteen of +our States, and was cherished as of vital moment by nearly all of them, +so that any popular aversion to it evinced by the North, would tend to +weaken the bonds of our Union. It might _seem_ hard to Pomp, or Sambo, +or Cuffee, to toil all day in the rice-swamp, the cotton-field, to the +music of the driver's lash, with no hope of remuneration or release, nor +even of working out thereby a happier destiny for his children; but +after all, what was the happiness or misery of three or four millions of +stupid, brutish negroes, that it should be allowed to weigh down the +greatness and glory of the Model Republic? Must there not always be a +foundation to every grand and towering structure? Must not some grovel +that others may soar? Is not _all_ drudgery repulsive? Yet must it not +be performed? Are not negroes habitually enslaved by each other in +Africa? Does not their enslavement here secure an aggregate of labor and +production that would else be unattainable? Are we not enabled by it to +supply the world with Cotton and Tobacco and ourselves with Rice and +Sugar? In short, is not to toil on white men's plantations the negro's +true destiny, and Slavery the condition wherein he contributes most +sensibly, considerably, surely, to the general sustenance and comfort of +mankind? If it is, away with all your rigmarole declarations of 'the +inalienable Rights of Man'--the right of every one to life, liberty, and +the pursuit of happiness! Let us have a reformed and rationalized +political Bible, which shall affirm the equality of all _white_ +men--_their_ inalienable right to liberty, etc., etc. Thus will our +consistency be maintained, our institutions and usages stand justified, +while we still luxuriate on our home-grown sugar and rice, and deluge +the civilized world with our cheap cotton and tobacco!--And thus our +country--which had claimed a place in the family of nations as the +legitimate child and foremost champion of Human Freedom--was fast +sinking into the loathsome attitude of foremost champion and most +conspicuous exemplar of the vilest and most iniquitous form of +Despotism--that which robs the laborer of the just recompense of his +sweat, and dooms him to a life of ignorance, squalor, and despair. + +But + + 'The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices + Make whips to scourge us.' + +For two generations our people have cherished, justified, and pampered +slavery, not that they really loved, or conscientiously approved the +accursed 'institution,' but because they deemed its tolerance essential +to our National Unity; and now we find Slavery desperately intent on and +formidably armed for the destruction of that Unity: for two generations +we have aided the master to trample on and rob his despised slave; and +now we are about to call that slave to defend our National Unity against +that master's malignant treason, or submit to see our country shattered +and undone. + +Who can longer fail to realize that 'there is a God who judgeth in the +earth?' or, if the phraseology suit him better, that there is, in the +constitution of the universe, provision made for the banishment of every +injustice, the redress of every wrong? + +'Well,' says a late convert to the fundamental truth, 'we must drive the +negro race entirely from our country, or we shall never again have union +and lasting peace.' + +Ah! friend? it is not the negro _per se_ who distracts and threatens to +destroy our country--far from it! Negroes did not wrest Texas from +Mexico, nor force her into the Union, nor threaten rebellion because +California was admitted as a Free State, nor pass the Nebraska bill, nor +stuff the ballot-boxes and burn the habitations of Kansas, nor fire on +Fort Sumter, nor do any thing else whereby our country has been +convulsed and brought to the brink of ruin. It is not by the negro--it +is by injustice to the negro--that our country has been brought to her +present deplorable condition. Were Slavery and all its evil brood of +wrongs and vices eradicated this day, the Rebellion would die out +to-morrow and never have a successor. The centripetal tendency of our +country is so intense--the attraction of every part for every other so +overwhelming--that Disunion were impossible but for Slavery. What +insanity in New-Orleans to seek a divorce from the upper waters of her +superb river! What a melancholy future must confront St. Louis, +separated by national barriers from Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Colorado, +Nebraska, and all the vast, undeveloped sources of her present as well +as prospective commerce and greatness! Ponder the madness of Baltimore, +seeking separation from that active and teeming West to which she has +laid an iron track over the Alleghanies at so heavy a cost! But for +Slavery, the Southron who should gravely propose disunion, would at once +be immured in a receptacle for lunatics. He would find no sympathy +elsewhere. + +But a nobler idea, a truer conception, of National Unity, is rapidly +gaining possession of the American mind. It is that dimly foreshadowed +by our President when, in his discussions with Senator Douglas, he said: +'I do not think our country can endure half slave and half free. I do +not think it will be divided, but I think it will become all one or the +other.' + +'A union of lakes, a union of lands,' is well; but a true 'union of +hearts' must be based on a substantial identity of social habitudes and +moral convictions. If Islamism or Mormonism were the accepted religion +of the South, and we were expected to bow to and render at least outward +deference to it, there would doubtless be thousands of Northern-born men +who, for the sake of office, or trade, or in the hope of marrying +Southern plantations, would profess the most unbounded faith in the +creed of the planters, and would crowd their favorite temples located on +our own soil. But this would not be a real bond of union between us, but +merely an exhibition of servility and fawning hypocrisy. And so the +Northern complaisance toward slavery has in no degree tended to avert +the disaster which has overtaken us, but only to breed self-reproach on +the one side, and hauteur with ineffable loathing on the other. + +Hereafter National Unity is to be no roseate fiction, no gainful +pretense, but a living reality. The United States of the future will be +no constrained alliance of discordant and mutually repellent +commonwealths, but a true exemplification of 'many in one'--many stars +blended in one common flag--many States combined in one homogeneous +Nation. Our Union will be one of bodies not merely, but of souls. The +merchant of Boston or New-York will visit Richmond or Louisville for +tobacco, Charleston for rice, Mobile for cotton, New-Orleans for sugar, +without being required at every hospitable board, in every friendly +circle, to repudiate the fundamental laws of right and wrong as he +learned them from his mother's lips, his father's Bible, and pronounce +the abject enslavement of a race to the interests and caprices of +another essentially just and universally beneficent. That a Northern man +visiting the South commercially should suppress his convictions adverse +to 'the peculiar institution,' and profess to regard it with approval +and satisfaction, was a part of the common law of trade--if one were +hostile to Slavery, what right had he to be currying favor with planters +and their factors, and seeking gain from the products of slave-labor? So +queried 'the South;' and, if any answer were possible, that answer would +not be heard. 'Love slavery or quit the South,' was the inexorable rule; +and the resulting hypocrisy has wrought deep injury to the Northern +character. As manufacturers, as traders, as teachers, as clerks, as +political aspirants, most of our active, enterprising, leading classes +have been suitors in some form for Southern favor, and the consequence +has been a prevalent deference to Southern ideas and a constant +sacrifice of moral convictions to hopes of material advantage. + +It has pleased God to bring this demoralizing commerce to a sudden and +sanguinary close. Henceforth North and South will meet as equals, +neither finding or fancying in their intimate relations any reason for +imposing a profession of faith on the other. The Southron visiting the +North and finding here any law, usage, or institution revolting to his +sense of justice, will never dream of offending by frankly avowing and +justifying the impression it has made upon him: and so with the Northman +visiting the South. It is conscious wrong alone that shrinks from +impartial observation and repels unfavorable criticism as hostility. We +freely proffer our farms, our factories, our warehouses, common-schools, +alms-houses, inns, and whatever else may be deemed peculiar among us, to +our visitors' scrutiny and comment: we know they are not perfect, and +welcome any hint that may conduce to their improvement. So in the broad, +free West. The South alone resents any criticism on her peculiarities, +and repels as enmity any attempt to convince her that her forced labor +is her vital weakness and her greatest peril. + +This is about to pass away. Slavery, having appealed to the sword for +justification, is to be condemned at her chosen tribunal and to fall on +the weapon she has aimed at the heart of the Republic. A new relation of +North to South, based on equality, governed by justice, and conceding +the fullest liberty, is to replace fawning servility by manly candor, +and to lay the foundations of a sincere, mutual, and lasting esteem. We +already know that valor is an American quality; we shall yet realize +that Truth is every man's interest, and that whatever repels scrutiny +confesses itself unfit to live. The Union of the future, being based on +eternal verities, will be cemented by every year's duration, until we +shall come in truth to 'know no North, no South, no East, no West,' but +one vast and glorious country, wherein sectional jealousies and hatreds +shall be unknown, and every one shall rejoice in the consciousness that +he is a son and citizen of the first of Republics, the land of +Washington and Jefferson, of Adams, Hamilton, and Jay, wherein the +inalienable Rights of Man as Man, at first propounded as the logical +justification of a struggle for Independence, became in the next +century, and through the influence of another great convulsion, the +practical basis of the entire political and social fabric--the accepted, +axiomatic root of the National life. + + + + +WAS HE SUCCESSFUL? + + 'Do but grasp into the thick of human life! Everyone _lives_ it--to + not many is it _known_; and seize it where you will, it is + interesting.'--_Goethe_. + + 'SUCCESSFUL.--Terminating in accomplishing what is wished or + intended.'--_Webster's Dictionary_. + + +CHAPTER SEVENTH. + +HIRAM MEEKER VISITS MR. BURNS + +Mr. Burns had finished his breakfast. + +A horse and wagon, as was customary at that hour, stood outside the +gate. He himself was on the portico where his daughter had followed him +to give her father his usual kiss. At that moment Mr. Burns saw some one +crossing the street toward his place. As he was anxious not to be +detained, he hastened down the walk, so that if he could not escape the +stranger, the person might at least understand that he had prior +engagements. Besides, Mr. Burns never transacted business at home, and a +visitor at so early an hour must have business for an excuse. The +new-comer evidently was as anxious to reach the house before Mr. Burns +left it, as the latter was to make his escape, for pausing a moment +across the way, as if to make certain, the sight of the young lady +appeared to reassure him, and he walked over and had laid his hand upon +the gate just as Mr. Burns was attempting to pass out. + +Standing on opposite sides, each with a hand upon the paling, the two +met. It would have made a good picture. Mr. Burns was at this time a +little past forty, but his habit of invariable cheerfulness, his +energetic manner, and his fine fresh complexion gave him the looks of +one between thirty and thirty-five. On the contrary, although Hiram +Meeker was scarcely twenty, and had never had a care nor a thought to +perplex him, he at the same time possessed a certain experienced look +which made you doubtful of his age. If one had said he was twenty, you +would assent to the proposition; if pronounced to be thirty, you would +consider it near the mark. So, standing as they did, you would perceive +no great disparity in their ages. + +We are apt to fancy individuals whom we have never seen, but of whom we +hear as accomplishing much, older than they really are. In this instance +Hiram had pictured a person at least twenty years older than Mr. Burns +appeared to be. He was quite sure there could be no mistake in the +identity of the man whom he beheld descending the portico. When he saw +him at such close quarters he was staggered for a moment, but for a +moment only. 'It must be he,' so he said to himself. + +Now Hiram had planned his visit with special reference to meeting Mr. +Burns in his own house. He had two reasons for this. He knew that there +he should find him more at his ease, more off his guard, and in a state +of mind better adapted to considering his case socially and in a +friendly manner than in the counting-room. + +Again: Sarah Burns. He would have an opportunity to renew the +acquaintance already begun. + +Well, there they stood. Both felt a little chagrined--Mr. Burns that an +appointment was threatened to be interrupted, and Hiram that his plan +was in danger of being foiled. + +This was for an instant only. + +Mr. Burns opened the gate passing almost rapidly through, bowing at the +same time to Hiram. + +'Do you wish to see me?' he said, as he proceeded to untie the horse and +get into the wagon. + +'Mr. Joel Burns, I presume?' + +'Yes.' + +'I did wish to see you, sir, on matters of no consequence to you, but +personal to myself. I can call again.' + +'I am going down to the paper-mill to be absent for an hour. If you will +come to my office in that time, I shall be at liberty.' + +Hiram had a faint hope he would be invited to step into the house and +wait. Disappointed in this, he replied very modestly: 'Perhaps you will +permit me to ride with you--that is, unless some one else is going. I +would like much to look about the factories.' + +'Certainly. Jump in.' And away they drove to Slab City. + +Hiram was careful to make no allusion to the subject of his mission to +Burnsville. He remained modestly silent while Mr. Burns occasionally +pointed out an important building and explained its use or object. +Arriving at the paper-mill, he gave Hiram a brief direction where he +might spend his time most agreeably. + +'I shall be ready to return in three quarters of an hour,' he said, and +disappeared inside. + +'I must be careful, and make no mistakes with such a man,' soliloquized +Hiram, as he turned to pursue his walk. 'He is quick and rapid--a word +and a blow--too rapid to achieve a GREAT success. It takes a man, +though, to originate and carry through all this. Every thing flourishes +here, that is evident. Joel Burns ought to be a richer man than they say +he is. He has sold too freely, and on too easy terms, I dare say. No +doubt, come to get into his affairs, there will be ever so much to look +after. Too much a man of action. Does not think enough. Just the place +for me for two or three years.' + +Hiram had no time for special examination, but strolled about from point +to point, so as to gain a general impression of what was going on. Five +minutes before the time mentioned by Mr. Burns had elapsed, Hiram was at +his post waiting for him to come out. This little circumstance did not +pass unnoticed. It elicited a single observation, 'You are punctual;' to +which Hiram made no reply. The drive back to the village was passed +nearly in silence. Mr. Burns's mind was occupied with his affairs, and +Hiram thought best not to open his own business till he could have a +fair opportunity. + +Mr. Burns's place for the transaction of general business was a small +one-story brick building, erected expressly for the purpose, and +conveniently located. There was no name on the door, but over it a +pretty large sign displayed in gilt letters the word 'Office,' simply. +Mr. Burns had some time before discovered this establishment to be a +necessity, in consequence of the multitude of matters with which he was +connected. He was the principal partner in the leading store in the +village, where a large trade was carried on. The lumber business was +still good. He had always two or three buildings in course of erection. +He owned one half the paper-mill. In short, his interests were extensive +and various, but all snug and well-regulated, and under his control. For +general purposes, he spent a certain time in his office. Beyond that, he +could be found at the store, at the mill, in some of the factories, or +elsewhere, as the occasion called him. + +Driving up to the 'office,' he entered with Hiram, and pointing the +latter to a seat, took one himself and waited to hear what our hero had +to say. + +Hiram opened his case, coming directly to the point. He gave a brief +account of his previous education and business experience. At the +mention of Benjamin Jessup's name, an ominous 'humph!' escaped Mr. +Burns's lips, which Hiram was not slow to notice. He saw it would prove +a disadvantage to have come from his establishment. Without attempting +immediately to modify the unfavorable impression, he was careful, before +he finished, to take pains to do so. + +'I have thus explained to you,' concluded Hiram,'that my object is to +gain a full, thorough knowledge of business, with the hope of becoming, +in time, a well-informed and, I trust, successful merchant.' + +'And for that purpose--' + +'For that purpose, I am very desirous to enter your service.' + +'Really, I do not think there is a place vacant which would suit you, +Mr. Meeker.' + +'It is of little consequence whether or not the place would suit me, +sir; only let me have the opportunity, and I will endeavor to adapt +myself to it.' + +'Oh! what I mean is, we have at present no situation fitted for a young +man as old and as competent as you appear to be.' + +'But if I were willing to undertake it?' + +'You see there would be no propriety in placing you in a situation +properly filled by a boy, or at least a youth. Still, I will not forget +your request; and if occasion should require, you shall have the first +hearing.' + +'I had hoped,' continued Hiram, no way daunted, 'that possibly you might +have been disposed to take me in your private employ.' + +'How?' + +'You have large, varied, and increasing interests. You must be severely +tasked, at least at times, to properly manage all. Could I not serve you +as an assistant? You would find me, I think, industrious and +persevering. I bring certificates of character from the Rev. Mr. +Goddard, our clergyman, and from both the deacons in our church.' + +This was said with a naïve earnestness, coupled with a diffidence +apparently _so_ genuine, that Mr. Burns could not but be favorably +impressed by it. In fact, the idea of a general assistant had never +before occurred to him. He reflected a moment, and replied: + +'It is true I have much on my hands, but one who has a great deal to do +can do a great deal; besides, the duties I undertake it would be +impossible to devolve on another.' + +'I wish you would give me a trial. The amount of salary would be no +object. I want to learn business, and I know I can learn it of _you_.' + +Mr. Burns was not insensible to the compliment. His features relaxed +into a smile, but his opinion remained unchanged. + +'Well,' said Hiram, in a pathetic tone, 'I hate to go back and meet +father. He said he presumed you had forgotten him, though he remembered +you when you lived in Sudbury, a young man about my age; and he told me +to make an engagement with you, if it were only as errand-boy.' + +[O Hiram! how could that glib and ready lie come so aptly to your lips? +Your father never said a word to you on the subject. It is doubtful if +he knew you were going to Burnsville at all, and he never had seen Mr. +Burns in his life. How carefully, Hiram, you calculated before you +resolved on this delicate method to secure your object! The risk of the +falsity of the whole ever being discovered--that was very remote, and +amounted to little. What you were about to say would injure no +one--wrong no one. If not true, it might well be true. Oh! but Hiram, do +you not see you are permitting an element of falsehood to creep in and +leaven your whole nature? You are exhibiting an utter disregard of +circumstances in your determination to carry your point. Heretofore you +have looked to but one end--self; but you have committed no overt act. +Have a care, Hiram Meeker; Satan is gaining on you.] + +Mr. Burns had not been favorably impressed, at first sight, with his +visitor. Magnetically he was repelled by him. He was too just a man to +allow this to influence him, by word or manner. He permitted Hiram to +accompany him to the mill and return with him. + +During this time, the latter had learned something of his man. He saw +quickly enough that he had failed favorably to impress Mr. Burns. +Determining not to lose the day, he assumed an entire ingenuousness of +character, coupled with much simplicity and earnestness. He appealed to +the certificates of his minister and the deacons, as if these would be +sure to settle the question irrespective of Mr. Burns's wants; and at +last the _lie_ slipped from his mouth, in appearance as innocently as +truth from the lips of an angel. + +At the mention of Sudbury and the time when he was a young man, Hiram, +who watched narrowly, thought he could perceive a slight quickening in +the eye of Mr. Burns--nothing more. + +His only reply, however, to the appeal, was to ask: + +'How old are you?' + +'Nineteen,' said Hiram softly. (He would be twenty the following week, +but he did not say so.) + +'Only nineteen!' exclaimed Mr. Burns, 'I took you for five-and-twenty.' + +'It is very singular,' replied Hiram mournfully; 'I am not aware that +persons generally think me older than I am.' + +'Oh! I presume not; and now I look closer, I do not think you _do_ +appear more than nineteen.' + +It was really astonishing how Hiram's countenance had changed. How every +trace of keen, shrewd apprehension had vanished, leaving only the +appearance of a highly intelligent and interesting, but almost diffident +youth! + +Mr. Burns sat a moment without speaking. Hiram did not dare utter a +word. He knew he was dealing with a man quick in his impressions and +rapid to decide. He had done his best, and would not venture farther. +Mr. Burns, looking up from a reflective posture, cast his eyes on Hiram. +The latter really appeared so amazingly distressed that Mr. Burns's +feelings were touched. + +'Is your mother living,' he asked. + +Hiram was almost on the point of denying the fact, but that would have +been too much. + +'Oh! yes, sir,' he replied. + +Again Mr. Burns was silent. Again Hiram calculated the chances, and +would not venture to interrupt him. + +This time Mr. Burns's thoughts took another direction. It occurred to +him that he had of late overtasked his daughter. 'True, it is a great +source of pleasure for us both that she can be of so much assistance to +me, but her duties naturally accumulate; she is doing too much. It is +not appropriate.' + +So thought Mr. Burns while Hiram Meeker sat waiting for a decision. + +'It is true,' continued Mr. Burns to himself, 'I think I ought to have a +private clerk. The idea occurred even to this youth. I will investigate +who and what he is, and will give him a trial if all is right.' + +He turned toward Hiram: + +'Young man, I am inclined to favor your request. But if I give you +employment in my _office_, your relations with me will necessarily be +confidential, and the situation will be one of trust and confidence. I +must make careful inquiries.' + +'Certainly, sir,' replied Hiram, drawing a long breath, for he saw the +victory was gained. 'I will leave these certificates, which may aid you +in your inquiries. I was born and brought up in Hampton, and you will +have no difficulty in finding persons who know my parents and me. When +shall I call again, sir?' + +'In a week.' + + * * * * * + +'Won! won! yes, won!' exclaimed Hiram aloud, when he had walked a +sufficient distance from the 'office' to enable him to do so without +danger of being overheard. 'A close shave, though! If he had said 'No,' +all Hampton would not have moved him. What a splendid place for me! How +did I come to be smart enough to suggest such a thing to him? I rather +think three years here will make me all right for New-York.' + +Hiram walked along to the hotel, and ordered dinner. While it was +getting ready, he strolled over the village. He was in hopes to meet, by +some accident, Miss Burns. + +He was not disappointed. Turning a corner, he came suddenly on Sarah, +who had run out for a call on some friend. Hiram fancied he had produced +a decided impression the evening they met at Mrs. Crofts', and with a +slight fluttering at the heart, he was about to stop and extend his +hand, when Miss Burns, hardly appearing to recognize him, only bowed +slightly and passed on her way. + +'You shall pay for this, young lady,' muttered Hiram between his +teeth--'you shall pay for this, or my name is not Hiram Meeker! I would +come here now for nothing else but to pull _her_ down!' continued Hiram +savagely. 'I will let her know whom she has to deal with.' + +He walked back to the hotel in a state of great irritation. With the +sight of a good dinner, however, this was in a degree dispelled, and +before he finished it, his philosophy came to his relief. + +'Time--time--it takes time. The fact is, I shall like the girl all the +better for her playing _off_ at first. Shan't forget it though--not +quite!' + +He drove back to Hampton that afternoon. His feelings were placid and +complacent as usual. He had asked the Lord in the morning to prosper his +journey and to grant him success in gaining his object, and he now +returned thanks for this new mark of God's grace and favor. + + * * * * * + +Mr. Burns did not inquire of the Rev. Mr. Goddard, nor of either of the +deacons mentioned by Hiram. He wrote direct to Thaddeus Smith, Senior, +whom he knew, and who he thought would be able to give a correct account +of Hiram. Informing Mr. Smith that the young man had applied to him for +a situation of considerable trust, he asked that gentleman to give his +careful opinion about his capacity, integrity, and general character. As +there could be but one opinion on the subject in all Hampton, Mr. Smith +returned an answer every way favorable. It is true he did not like Hiram +himself, but if called on for a reason, he could not have told why. As +we have recorded, every one spoke well of him. Every one said how good, +and moral, and smart he was, and honest Mr. Smith reported accordingly. + +'Well, well,' said Mr. Burns, 'if Smith gives such an account of him +while he has been all the time in an opposition store, he must be all +right.... Don't quite like his looks, though ... wonder what it is.' + + * * * * * + +When at the expiration of the week Hiram went to receive an answer from +Mr. Burns, he did not attempt to find him at his house. He was careful +to call at the office at the hour Mr. Burns was certain to be in. + +'I hear a good account of you, Meeker,' said Mr. Burns, 'and in that +respect every thing is satisfactory. Had I not given you so much +encouragement, I should still hesitate about making a new department. +However, we will try it.' + +'I am very thankful to you, sir. As I said, I want to learn business and +the compensation is no object.' + +'But it _is_ an object with me. I can have no one in my service who is +not fully paid. Your position should entitle you to a liberal salary. If +you can not earn it, you can not fill the place.' + +'Then I shall try to earn it, I assure you,' replied Hiram, 'and will +leave the matter entirely with you. I have brought you a line from my +father,' he continued, and he handed Mr. Burns a letter. + +It contained a request, prepared at Hiram's suggestion, that Mr. Burns +would admit him in his family. The other ran his eye hastily over it. A +slight frown contracted his brow. + +'Impossible!' he exclaimed. 'My domestic arrangements will not permit of +such a thing. Quite impossible.' + +'So I told father, but he said it would do no harm to write. He did not +think you would be offended.' + +'Offended! certainly not.' + +'Perhaps,' continued Hiram, 'you will be kind enough to recommend a good +place to me. I should wish to reside in a religious family, where no +other boarders are taken.' + +The desire was a proper one, but Hiram's tone did not have the ring of +the true metal. It grated slightly on Mr. Burns's moral nerves--a little +of his first aversion came back--but he suppressed it, and promised to +endeavor to think of a place which should meet Hiram's wishes. It was +now Saturday. It was understood Hiram should commence his duties the +following Monday. This arranged, he took leave of his employer, and +returned home. + +That evening Mr. Burns told his daughter he was about to relieve her +from the drudgery--daily increasing--of copying letters and taking care +of so many papers, by employing a confidential clerk. Sarah at first was +grieved; but when her father declared he should talk with her just as +ever about every thing he did or proposed to do, and that he thought in +the end the new clerk would be a great relief to him, she was content. + +'But whom have you got, father,' (she always called him 'father,') 'for +so important a situation?' + +'His name is Meeker--Hiram Meeker--a young man very highly recommended +to me from Hampton.' + +'I wonder if it was not he whom I met last Saturday!' + +'Possibly; he called on me that day. Do you know him?' + +'I presume it is the same person I saw at Mrs. Crofts' some weeks since. +Last Saturday a young man met me and almost stopped, as if about to +speak. I did not recognize him, although I could not well avoid bowing. +Now I feel quite sure it was Mr. Meeker.' + +'Very likely.' + +'Well, I do hope he will prove faithful and efficient. I recollect every +one spoke very highly of him.' + +'I dare say.' + +Mr. Burns was in a reverie. Certain thoughts were passing through his +mind--painful, unhappy thoughts--thoughts which had never before visited +him. + +'Sarah, how old are you?' + +'Why, father, what a question!' She came and sat on his knee and looked +fondly into his eyes. 'What _can_ you be thinking of not to remember I +am seventeen?' + +'Of course I remember it, dear child,' replied Mr. Burns tenderly; 'my +mind was wandering, and I spoke without reflection.' + +'But you were thinking of me?' + +'Perhaps.' + +He kissed her, and rose and walked slowly up and down the room. Still he +was troubled. + +We shall not at present endeavor to penetrate his thoughts; nor is it +just now to our purpose to present them to the reader. + + * * * * * + +Hiram Meeker had been again _successful_. He had resolved to enter the +service of Mr. Burns and he _had_ entered it. He came over Monday +morning early, and put up at the hotel. In three or four days he secured +just the kind of boarding-place he was in search of. A very respectable +widow lady, with two grown-up daughters, after consulting with Mr. +Burns, did not object to receive him as a member of her family. + + + + +AN ARMY CONTRACTOR. + + + Lived a man of iron mold, + Crafty glance and hidden eye, + Dead to every gain but gold, + Deaf to every human sigh. + Man he was of hoary beard, + Withered cheek and wrinkled brow. + Imaged on his soul, appeared: + 'Honest as the times allow.' + + + + +LITERARY NOTICES. + + + WHY PAUL FERROLL KILLED HIS WIFE. By the Author of Paul + Ferroll. New-York: Carleton, 413 Broadway. Boston: N. Williams & + Co. + +Those who remember _Paul Ferroll_, probably recall it as a novel of +merit, which excited attention, partly from its peculiarity, and partly +from the mystery in which its writer chose to conceal herself--a not +unusual course with timid debutantes in literature, who hope either to +_intriguer_ the public with their masks, or quietly escape the disgrace +of a _fiasco_ should they fail. Mrs. Clive is, however, it would seem, +satisfied that the public did not reject her, since she now reäppears to +inform us, 'novelly,' why the extremely ill-married Paul made himself +the chief of sinners, by committing wife-icide. The work is in fact a +very readable novel--much less killing indeed than its title--but still +deserving the great run which we are informed it is having, and which, +unlike the run of shad, will not we presume--as it is a very summer +book--fall off as the season advances. + + + THE CHANNINGS. A Domestic Novel of Real Life. By Mrs. + Henry Wood. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson. Boston: Crosby and + Nichols. + +Notwithstanding the praise which has been so lavishly bestowed on this +'tale of domestic life,' the reader will, if any thing more than a mere +reader of novels for the very sake of 'story,' probably agree with us, +after dragging through to the end, that it would be a blessing if some +manner of stop could be put to the manufacture of such books. A really +_original_, earnest novel; vivid in its life-picturing, genial in its +characters; the book of a man or woman who has thought something, and +actually _knows_ something, is at any time a world's blessing. But what +has _The Channings_ of all this in it? Every sentence in it rings like +something read of old, all the incidents are of a kind which were worn +out years ago--to be sure the third-rate story-reader may lose himself +in it--just as we may for a fiftieth time endeavor to trace out the plan +of the Hampton Labyrinth, and with about as much real profit or +amusement. + +It is a melancholy sign of the times to learn that such hackneyed +English trash as _The Channings_ has sold well! It has not deserved it. +American novels which have appeared nearly cotemporaneously with it, and +which have ten times its merit, have not met with the same success, for +the simple and sole reason that almost any English circulating library +stuff will at any time meet with better patronage than a home work. When +our public becomes as much interested in itself as it is in the very +common-place life of Cockney clergymen and clerks, we shall perhaps +witness a truly generous encouragement of native literature. + + + THE PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND. A Story of the Coast of Maine. + By Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. + +In reading this quiet, natural, well-pictured narrative of Northern +life, we are tempted to exclaim--fresh from the extraordinary contrast +presented by _Agnes of Sorrento--O si sic omnes!_ Why can not Mrs. Stowe +_always_ write like this? Why not limit her efforts to subjects which +develop her really fine powers--to setting forth the social life of +America at the present day, instead of harping away at the seven times +worn out and knotted cord of Catholic and Italian romance? _The Pearl of +Orr's Island_, though not a work which will sweep Uncle Tom-like in +tempest fashion over all lands and through all languages, is still a +very readable and very refreshing novel--full of reality as we find it +among real people, 'inland or on sounding shore,' and by no means +deficient in those moral and religious lessons to inculcate which it +appears to have been written. Piety is indeed the predominant +characteristic of the work--not obtrusive or sectarian, but earnest and +actual; so that it will probably be classed, on the whole, as a +religious novel, though we can hardly recall a romance in which the +pious element interferes so little with the general interest of the +plot, or is so little conducive to gloom. The hard, '_Angular_ Saxon' +characteristics of the rural people who constitute the _dramatis +personæ_, their methods of thought and tone of feeling, so singularly +different from that of 'the world,' their marked peculiarities, are all +set forth with an apparently unconscious ability deserving the highest +praise. + + + THE GOLDEN HOUR. By MONOURE D. CONWAY, Author of + the 'Rejected Stone,' '_Impera Parendo_.' Boston: Ticknor and + Fields. + +The most remarkable work which the war has called out is beyond question +the _Rejected Stone_. Wild, vigorous, earnest, even to suffering, honest +as truth itself, quaint, humorous, pathetic, and startlingly eccentric. +Those who read it at once decided that a new writer had arisen among us, +and one destined to make no mean mark in the destinies of his country. +The reader who will refer to our first number will find what we said of +it in all sincerity, since the author was then to us unknown. He is--it +is almost needless to inform the reader--a thorough-going abolitionist, +yet one who, while looking more intently at the welfare of the black +than we care to do in the present imbroglio, still appreciates and urges +Emancipation, or freeing the black, in its relation to the welfare of +the white man. Mr. Conway is not, however, a man who speaks ignorantly +on this subject. A Virginian born and bred, brought up in the very heart +of the institution, he studied it at home in all its relations, and +found out its evils by experience. A thoroughly honest man, too +clear-headed and far too intelligent to be rated as a fanatic; too +familiar with his subject to be at all disregarded, he claims close +attention in many ways, those of wit and eloquence not being by any +means the least. In the work before us, he insists that there is a +golden hour at hand, a title borrowed from the quaint advertisement, of +'Lost a golden hour set with sixty diamond minutes'--which if not +grasped at by the strong, daring hand will see our great national +opportunity lost forever. We are not such disbelievers in fate as to +imagine that this golden hour ever can be inevitably lost. If the cause +of freedom rolls slowly, it is because even in free soil there are too +many Conservative pebbles. Still we agree with Conway as to his estimate +of the great mass of cowardice, irresolution, and folly which react on +our administration. If the word 'Emancipationist,'--meaning thereby one +who looks to the welfare of the _white_ man rather than the negro--be +substituted for 'Abolitionist' in the following, our more intelligent +readers will probably agree with Mr. Conway exactly: + + 'If this country is to be saved, the Abolitionists are to save it; + and though they seem few in numbers, they are not by a thousandth + so few as were the Christians when JESUS suffered, or Protestants + when Luther spoke. There is need only that we should stand as one + man, and unto the end, for an absolutely free Republic, swearing to + promote eternal strife until it be attained--until in waters which + Agitation, the angel of freedom, has troubled, the diseased nation + shall bathe and be made every whit whole. + + 'The Golden Hour is before us: there is in America enough wisdom + and courage to coin it, ere it passes, into national honor and + peace, if it is all put forth. + + 'Up, hearts!' + +It is needless to say that we earnestly commend this book to all who +are truly interested in the great questions of the time. + + + TRAGEDY OF SUCCESS. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. + +Another of the extraordinary series bearing the motto, '_Aux plus +desheritées le plus d'amour_'--works as strongly marked by talent as by +misapplied taste. The dramatic ability, the deep vein of poetry, the +earnest thought, faith, and humanity of these dramas or drama, are +beyond question--but very questionable to our mind is the extreme love +of over-adorning truth which can induce a writer to represent plantation +negroes as speaking elegant language and using lofty, tender, and poetic +sentiments on almost all occasions, or at least to a degree which is +exceptional and not regular. If we hope that the time may come when all +of GOD'S children will be raised to this high standard of +thought and culture, so much the more reason is there why they should +not now be exaggerated and placed in a false light. Yet, as we have +said, the work abounds in noble thoughts and true poetry. It may be read +with somewhat more than 'profit,' for it has within it a great and +loving heart. True _humanity_ is impressed on every page, and where that +exists greatness and beauty are never absent. + + + THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME. By VICTOR HUGO. + New-York: Dick and Fitzgerald. 1862. + +Many years ago--say some thirty-odd--when French literature still walked +in the old groves, and the classic form and style of the old revolution +still swayed all the minor minds, there sprung up a reäction in the +so-called romantic school of which Victor Hugo became the leader. The +medieval renaissance, which fifty years before had penetrated Germany +and England, and indeed all the North, was late in coming to France, but +when it did come it stirred the Latin Quarter and Young France +wonderfully. If its results were less remarkable in literature than in +any other country, they were at least more admired in their day. +Principal among these results was the novel now before us. And this book +is really a tolerable imitation of Walter Scott. The feverish spirit of +modern France craved, indeed, stronger ingredients than the Wizard of +the North was wont to gather, and the _Hunchback_ is accordingly +'sensational.' It has in fact been called extravagant--yes, forced and +unnatural. Even ordinary readers were apt to say as much of it. We well +remember meeting many years ago in a well-thumbed circulating-library +copy of the _Hunchback of Notre Dame_ the following doggerel on the last +page: + + 'In Paris when to the Grève you go, + Pray do not grieve if VICTOR HUGO + Should there be hanging by a rope, + Without the blessing of the Pope, + Or that of any human creature + On him who libels human nature.' + +Yet we counsel all who would be well-informed in literature--as well as +the far greater number of those who read only for entertainment, to get +this work. It is exciting--full of strange, quaint picturing of the +Middle Ages, has vivid characters, and is full of life. Among the series +of books with fewer faults, but, alas! with far fewer excellencies, +which are daily printed, there is, after all, seldom one so well worth +reading as _The Hunchback of Notre Dame_. + + + + +EDITOR'S TABLE. + + +At last we are wide awake. At last the nation has found out its +strength, and determined, despite doughface objections and impediments +to every proposal of every kind, to push the war with energy, so that +the foe _shall_ be overwhelmed. Six hundred thousand men, as we write, +will soon swell the ranks of the Federal army, and if six hundred +thousand more are needed they can be had. For the North is arming in +real earnest, thank God! and when it rises in _all_ its force, who shall +withstand it? It is a thing to remember with pride, that the +proclamation calling for the second three hundred thousand by draft, was +received with the same joy as though we had heard of a great victory. + +Government has not gone to work one day too soon. From a rebellion, the +present cause of strife has at length assumed the proportion of equal +war. The South has cast its _whole_ population, all its means, all its +energy, heart and soul, life and future, on one desperate game; while we +with every advantage have let out our strength little by little, so as +to hurt the enemy as little as possible. Doughface democracy among us +has squalled as if receiving deadly wounds at every proposal to crush or +injure the foe. It opposed, heart and soul, the early On to Richmond +movement, when the Republicans clamored for an overwhelming army, a +grand rally, and a bold push. It rejoiced at heart over Bull Run--for +the South was saved for a time. It upheld the wounded snake, 'anaconda' +system, it opposed the using of contrabands in any way, it urged, heart +and soul, the protection of the property of rebels, it warred on +confiscation in any form, it was ready with a negative to every +proposition to energetically push the war, and finally its press is now +opposing the settling our soldiers on the cotton-lands of the South. +Thus far the slow course of this war of ten millions against twenty +millions is the history of the action of falsehood and treason benumbing +the majority. They have lied against us, and against millions, that the +negro was all we cared for, though it was the WHITE MAN, far, far above +the black for whom we spoke and cared, or how else could that _free_ +labor in which the black is but a small unit have been our principal +hope and thought? + +But treason at home could not last forever, nor will lies always endure. +The people have found out that the foe _can not_ be gently whipped and +amiably reinstated in their old place of honor. Moreover we have no time +to lose. Another year will find us financially bankrupt, and the enemy +in all probability, in that case, free and fairly afloat by foreign aid. + +And if the South goes, _all_ may possibly go. In every city exist +desperate and unprincipled men--the FERNANDO WOODS of the +dangerous classes--who to rule would do all in their power to break our +remaining union into hundreds of small independencies. The South would +flood us with smuggled European goods--for, be it remembered, this +iniquitous device to beat down our manufacture has always been prominent +on their programme--our industry would be paralyzed, exchanges ruined, +and the Eastern and Middle States become paltry shadows of what they +once were. + +The people have at last seen this terrible ghost stare them full in the +face. They have found out that it is 'rule or ruin' in earnest. No time +now to have every decisive and expedient measure yelled down as +'unconstitutional' or undemocratic or unprecedented. No days these to +fight a maddened foe with conservative kid-gloves and frighten the fell +tiger back with democratic rose-water. We must do all and every thing, +even as the foe have done. We have been generous, we have been +merciful--we have protected property, we have returned slaves, we have +let our wounded lie in the open air and die rather than offend the +fiendish-hearted women of Secessia--and what have we got by it? Lies and +lies, again and yet again. For refusing to touch the black, Mr. Lincoln +is termed by the Southern press 'a dirty negro-stealer,' and our troops, +for _not_ taking the slaves and thereby giving the South all its present +crop and for otherwise aiding them, are simply held up as hell-hounds +and brigands. Much we have made by forbearance! + +The miserable position held by Free State secessionists, Breckinridge +Democrats, rose-water conservatives, and other varieties of the great +Northern branch of Southern treason, is fully exemplified by the +following extract from Breckinridge's special organ, the Louisville +_Courier_, printed while Nashville was still under rebel rule, an +article which has been of late more than once closely reëchoed and +imitated by the Richmond _Whig_. + + 'This,' says the _Courier_, 'has been called a fratricidal war by + some, by others an irrepressible conflict between freedom and + slavery. We respectfully take issue with the authors of both these + ideas. We are not the brothers of the Yankees, and the slavery + question is merely the _pretext, not the cause of the war_. The + true irrepressible conflict lies fundamentally in the hereditary + hostility, the sacred animosity, the eternal antagonism, between + the two races engaged. + + 'The Norman cavalier can not brook the vulgar familiarity of the + Saxon Yankee, while the latter is continually devising some plan to + bring down his aristocratic neighbor to his own detested level. + Thus was the contest waged in the old United States. So long as + _Dickinson dough-faces were to be bought_, and _Cochrane cowards to + be frightened_, so long was the Union tolerable to Southern men; + but when, owing to divisions in our ranks, the Yankee hirelings + placed one of their own spawn over us, political connection became + unendurable, and separation necessary to preserve our + _self-respect_. + + 'As our Norman friends in England, always a minority, have ruled + their Saxon countrymen in political vassalage up to the present + day, so have we, the slave oligarchs, governed the Yankees till + within a twelve-month. We framed the Constitution, for seventy + years molded the policy of the Government, and placed our own men, + or '_Northern men with Southern principles_,' in power.' + +Cool--and in part true. They _did_ rule us in political vassalage, they +_did_ place their own men, or 'Northern men with Southern principles,' +in power, and there are scores of such abandoned traitors even now +crying out 'pro-slavery' and abusing Emancipation among us, in the hope +that if some turn of Fortune's wheel should separate the South, they may +again rise to power as its agents and representatives! GOD help them! It +is hard to conceive of men sunk so low! Nobody wants them now--but a +time _may_ come. They are in New-York--there is a peculiarly +contemptible clique of them in Boston, and the Philadelphia _Bulletin_ +informs us that there is exactly such another precious party in the city +of Brotherly Love, who are 'in a very awkward position just now, +inasmuch as there is no market for them. They are in the position of +Johnson and Don Juan in the slave-market at Constantinople, and ready to +exclaim: + + 'I wish to G--d that some body would buy us!'' + +The first draft for the army was a death-blow to the slow-poison +democracy, and it has been frightened accordingly. Like a slug on whom +salt has just begun to fall, the crawling mass is indeed manifesting +symptoms of frightened activity--but it is the activity of death. For +the North is awake in real earnest; it is out with banner and bayonet; +there is to be no more playing at war or wasting of lives--the foe is to +be rooted out--_delanda est Dixie_. And in the hour of triumph where +will the pro-slavery traitors be then? Where? Where they always strive +to be--on the _winning_ side. They will 'back water' as they have done +on progressive measure which they once opposed, since the war begun; +they will eat their words and fawn and wheedle those in power until the +opportunity again occurs for building up on some sham principle a party +of rum and faro-banks, low demagogue-ism, ignorance, reaction, and +vulgarity. Then from his present toad-like swelling and whispering, we +shall hear the full-expanded fiend roar out into a real life. It is the +old story of history--the corrupt and venal arraigning itself against +truth and terming the latter 'visionary' and 'fanatical.' + + * * * * * + +Those who visit the sick soldiers and do good in the hospitals +occasionally get a gleam of fun among all the sad scenes--for any wag +who has been to the wars seldom loses his humor, although he may have +lost all else save that and honor. Witness a sketch from life: + + +A LITTLE HEAVY. + +C----, good soul, after taking all the little comforts he could afford +to give to the wounded soldiers, went into the hospital for the fortieth +time the other day, with his mite, consisting of several papers of +fine-cut chewing-tobacco, Solace for the wounded, as he called it. He +came to one bed, where a poor fellow lay cheerfully humming a tune, and +studying out faces on the papered wall. + +'Got a fever?' asked C----. + +'No,' answered the soldier. + +'Got a cold?' + +'Yes, cold--lead--like the d----l!' + +'Where?' + +'Well, to tell you the truth, it's pretty well scattered. First, there's +a bullet in my right arm, they han't dug that out yet. Then there's one +near my thigh--it's sticking in yet: one in my leg--hit the bone--_that_ +fellow _hurts_! one through my left hand--that fell out. And I tell you +what, friend, with all this lead in me, I feel, ginrally speaking, _a +little heavy all over_!' + +C---- lightened his woes with a double quantity of Solace. + + * * * * * + +C---- was a good fellow, and the soldier deserved his 'Solace.' Many of +them among us are poor indeed. 'Boys!' exclaimed a wounded volunteer to +two comrades, as they paused the other day before a tobacconist's and +examined with the eyes of connoisseurs the brier or bruyére-wood pipes +in his window, 'Boys! I'd give fifty dollars, if I had it, for four +shillins to buy one of them pipes with!' + + * * * * * + +In a late number of an English magazine, Harriet Martineau gives some +account of her conversations, when in America in 1835, with +Chief-Justice Marshall and Mr. Madison. These men then represented the +old ideas of the Republic and of Virginia as it had been. The following +extract fully declares their opinions: + + 'When I knew Chief-Justice Marshall he was eighty-three--as + bright-eyed and warm-hearted as ever, while as dignified a judge as + ever filled the highest seat in the highest court of any country. + He said he had seen Virginia the leading State for half his life; + he had seen her become the second, and sink to be (I think) the + fifth. + + 'Worse than this, there was no arresting her decline if her + citizens did not put an end to slavery; and he saw no signs of any + intention to do so, east of the mountains, at least. He had seen + whole groups of estates, populous in his time, lapse into waste. He + had seen agriculture exchanged for human stock-breeding; and he + keenly felt the degradation. + + 'The forest was returning over the fine old estates, and the wild + creatures which had not been seen for generations were reäppearing, + numbers and wealth were declining, and education and manners were + degenerating. It would not have surprised him to be told that on + that soil would the main battles be fought when the critical day + should come which he foresaw. + + 'To Mr. Madison despair was not easy. He had a cheerful and + sanguine temper, and if there was one thing rather than another + which he had learned to consider secure, it was the Constitution + which he had so large a share in making. Yet he told me that he was + nearly in despair, and that he had been quite so till the + Colonization Society arose. + + 'Rather than admit to himself that the South must be laid waste by + a servile war, or the whole country by a civil war, he strove to + believe that millions of negroes could be carried to Africa, and so + got rid of. I need not speak of the weakness of such a hope. What + concerns us now is that he saw and described to me, when I was his + guest, the dangers and horrors of the state of society in which he + was living. + + 'He talked more of slavery than of all other subjects together, + returning to it morning, noon, and night. He said that the clergy + perverted the Bible because it was altogether against slavery; that + the colored population was increasing faster than the white; and + that the state of morals was such as barely permitted society to + exist. + + 'Of the issue of the conflict, whenever it should occur, there + could, he said, be no doubt. A society burdened with a slave system + could make no permanent resistance to an unencumbered enemy; and he + was astonished at the fanaticism which blinded some Southern men to + so clear a certainty. + + 'Such was Mr. Madison's opinion in 1855.' + +But the trial has come at last, and it is for the country to decide +whether the South is to be allowed to secede, or to remain strengthened +by their slaves, planting and warring against us until our own resources +becoming exhausted, Europe can at an opportune moment intervene. But +will that be the end? Will not Russia revenge the Crimea by aiding +us--will not Austria be dismembered, France on fire, Southern Europe in +arms, and one storm of anarchy sweep over the world? It is all possible, +should we persevere in fighting the enemy with one hand and feeding him +with the other. + + * * * * * + +There is such a thing as silly theatrical sentiment, and much of it is +shown in the vulgar, melodramatic acting out of popular songs, as shown +by the subjoined brace of anecdotes: + + DEAR SIR: I have had, in my time, not a little experience + of jailer, warden, and, of late, camp life, and would like to say a + word about silly, misplaced sympathy, of which I have witnessed + enough in all conscience. + + At one time, while officering it in a prison not one thousand + miles--as the penny papers say--from the State of New-York, we + received into our hands about as degraded a specimen of the _genus_ + 'murderer,' as it was ever my lot to see. He had killed a woman in + a most cowardly and cruel manner, and was, to my way of thinking, + (and I was used to such fellows,) about as brutal-looking a human + beast as one need look at. However, we had hardly got him into a + cell, before a carriage drove up to the door, and a + splendidly-dressed lady, with a basket of oranges and a five-dollar + camellia bouquet, asked to see the prisoner. + + '_Do_ let me see him!' she cried, 'I read of him in the newspaper, + and, guilty as he is, I would fain contribute my mite to soothe + him.' + + 'He is a rough customer, marm,' said my assistant. + + 'Yes, but you know what the poet says: + + "Bring flowers to the captive's lonely cell." + + So she went in. She took but small notice of the prisoner, however, + arranged her bouquet, left her oranges, and departed. It occurred + to me to promptly search the bouquet for a concealed note or file, + so I entered the cell as she went out. I found Shocky, as we called + him, sucking away at an orange, and staring at the flowers in great + amazement. Finally, he spoke. + + 'Wat in ----'s the use a sendin' them things to a feller fur, + unless they give him the rum with 'em?' + + 'What do you suppose they are meant for?' I replied. + + 'Why, to make bitters with, in course. An't them come-a-mile + flowers?' + + The second is something of the same sort. Not long since, a lot of + us--I am an H. P., 'high private,' now--were quartered in several + wooden tenements, and in the inner room of one lay the _corpus_ of + a young Secesh officer, awaiting burial. The news soon spread to a + village not far off. Down came tearing a sentimental and not + bad-looking specimen of a Virginny dame. + + 'Let me kiss him for his mother!' she cried, as I interrupted her + progress. '_Do_ let me kiss him for his mother!' + + 'Kiss whom?' + + 'The dear little lieutenant, the one who lies dead within. P'int + him out to me, sir, if you please. I never saw him, but--oh!' + + I led her through a room in which Lieutenant ----, of Philadelphia, + lay stretched out on an up-turned trough, fast asleep. Supposing + him to be the 'article' sought for, she rushed up, and exclaiming, + 'Let me kiss him for his mother,' approached her lips to his + forehead. What was her amazement when the 'corpse,' ardently + clasping its arms around her, returned the salute vigorously, and + exclaimed: + + 'Never mind the old lady, Miss, go it on your own account. I + haven't the slightest objection!' + + Sentiment is a fine thing, Mr. Editor, but it should be handled as + one handles the spiked guns which the rebels leave behind, loaded + with percussion-caps--very carefully. + + Yours amazingly, + + WARDEN. + + * * * * * + +Readers who are desirous of seeing Ravenshoe fully played out will +please glance at the following: + + +RAVENSHOE--ITS SEQUEL. + +PREFACE + +There are those who assert that the doctrine of Compensation is utterly +ignored in Ravenshoe. They instance the rewarding Welter, a coarse, +brutal scoundrel and sensual beast, with wealth and title, and such +honor as the author can confer, as an insult to every rational reader; +nor can they think Charles Ravenshoe, or Horton, who endeavored right +manfully to support himself, repaid for this exertion, and for bearing +up stoutly against his troubles, by being compelled 'to pass a dull, +settled, dreaming, melancholy old age' as an invalid. + +It may naturally be thought that a residence of years in Australia, the +mother of Botany Bay, where not exactly the best of American society +could be found, has had its effect in embittering even an Englishman +against Americans, and of embroiling him with his own countrymen; +therefore the reader must smile at this principle of rewarding vice and +punishing virtue; it is what Ravenshoe pretends to be--something novel. + +The extreme dissatisfaction of the public with this volume calls +imperatively for a satisfactory conclusion to it, consequently a sequel +is now presented in what the Australians call the most 'bloody dingo[6] +politeful' manner. + + +CHAPTER I. + +A small boy with a dirty face met another small boy similarly +caparisoned. Said the first: 'Eech! you don' know how much twicet two +is?' + +'You are a ----' (we suppress the word he used; suffice it to say, it +may be defined, 'a kind of harp much used by the ancients!')--'twicet +two is four. Hmm!' replied the second. + +The reader may not see it, but the writer does, that this trivial +conversation has important bearing on the fate of William Ravenshoe, the +wrongful-rightful, rightful-wrongful, etcetera, heir. For further +particulars, see the Bohemian Girl, where a babe is changed by a nurse +in order that the nurse may have change for it. + +When Charles Horton Ravenshoe returned once more to his paternal acres, +it will be remembered he settled two thousand pounds a year, rent-charge +on Ravenshoe, in favor of William Ravenshoe. Over and above this, +Charles enjoyed from this estate and from what Lord Saltire (Satire?) +willed him, no less than fourteen thousand pounds; his settlement on +William was therefore by no means one half of the income, consequently +unfair to the exiled Catholic half-brother. + +After the death of Father Mackworth he was followed by a gentleman in +crow-colored raiment, named Father Macksham, who accompanied William, +the ex-heir, to a small cottage, where the plots inside were much larger +than the grass-plots outside, and where Father Macksham hatched the +following fruit, which only partially ripened. He determined to +overthrow Welter by the means of Adelaide, then overthrow Adelaide by +means of Charles Ravenshoe, then overthrow the latter by his +illegitimate brother, and finally throw the last over in favor of the +Jesuits. He occupied all his spare moments preparing the fireworks. + + +CHAPTER II. + +The reader will remember that Adelaide, wife of Welter, or Lord Ascot, +broke her back while attempting to jump a fence, mounted on the back of +the Irish mare 'Molly Asthore,' but the reader does not know that Welter +was the cause of his wife's fall, and that he actually hired a groom to +scare 'Molly Asthore' so that she would take the fence, and also his +wife out of this vale of tears. (This sentence I know is not +grammatical; who cares?) Welter, when he saw that his wife was not +killed, was furious. His large red brutal face turned to purple; he +smote his prize-fighting chest with his huge fists, he lowered his +eyebrows until he resembled an infuriated hog, and then he retired to +his house and drank a small box of claret--pints--twenty-four to the +dozen! + +Adelaide, too, was furious, but she sent privately to London for Surgeon +Forsups--he came; then in the night season, unbeknown to Welter, an +operation was performed, and behold! in the morning light lay Adelaide, +tall, straight, commanding, proud--well as ever! in fact, straight as a +shingle. Do you think she wanted to choke Welter? I do. + + +CHAPTER III. + +Nature was in one of her gloomiest moods, the clouds were the color of +burnt treacle, the sombre rain pelted the dismal streets; mud was +everywhere, desolation, misery, wet boots, and ruined hats. In the midst +of such a scene, Welter, Lord Ascot, died of apoplexy in the throat, +caused by a rope. Who did the deed? Owls on the battlements answer me. +Did he do it himself or was it done for him? Shrieking elements respond. +Echo answers: Justice! + + +CHAPTER IV. + +Ravenshoe bay again. Sunlight on the waters; clear blue sky; all nature +smiling serenely; Charles Ravenshoe--I adore the man when I think of +him--landing a forty-four-pound salmon; ruddy with health, joyous in +countenance; two curly-headed boys screaming for joy; his wife, 'she +that was' (Americanism picked up among Yorkshiremen in Australia) Mary +Corby, laughing heartily at the _tout ensemble_. William Ravenshoe +affectionately helping Charles with a landing-net to secure the salmon, +thus speaks to him: + +'Charles, this idea of yours of dividing the 'state evenly between us is +noble, but I shall not accept it. I would like a small piece of the tail +of this salmon for dinner, though, if it will not rob you.' + +'William, halves in every thing between us is my motto; so say no more +about it. The delightful news that Father Macksham has at last fallen a +victim to his love of gain, while trying to run a cargo of cannons, +powder, and Enfield rifles to the confederate States, IN DIRECT +OPPOSITION TO HER BLESSED MAJESTY'S COMMANDS, rejoices my heart to that +extent that I exclaim, perish all Jesuits! Now that you have turned +Protestant, and are thoroughly out of the woods of medieval romance, I +may say, + + 'The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold,' + +and quote Tennyson, like poor Cuthbert, all day long. Who is there to +hinder?' + +'No one,' replied William, with all the warmth of heart of a man who was +once a groom and then a bridegroom. 'No one. I saw Adelaide this morning +a-carrying flannels and rum to the poor of the parish; how thoroughly +she has reformed, I'm sure.' + + * * * * * + +Reader, let us pause here and dwell on the respective merits of the +Bohemian Girl, and Father Rodin in the _Mysteries of Paris_, compared +with the characters described in _Ravenshoe_. Let us ask if an English +novel can be written without allusion to the Derby or Life at Oxford, +the accumulation of pounds or the squandering of pounds, rightful heirs +or wrongful heirs, false marriages, or the actions of spoiled children +generally? An answer is looked for. + + * * * * * + +'And further this deponent sayeth not.' + + * * * * * + +The Nashville _Union_--the new Union newspaper of that city--is +emphatically 'an institution,' and a dashing one at that. Its every +column is like the charge of a column of infantry into the unhallowed +Rebel-ry of Disunion. 'Don't compromise your loyalty with rebels,' says +the _Union_, 'until you are ready to compromise your soul with the +devil.' + +Some of the humor of this brave pioneer sheet is decidedly piquant. +Among its quizzical literary efforts the review of Rev. Dr. McFerrin's +_Confederate Primer_ is good enough to form the initial of a series. We +make the following extracts: + + 'Nothing is more worthy of being perpetuated than valuable + contributions to literature. The literature of a nation is its + crown of glory, whose reflected light shines far down the + swift-rolling waves of time and gladdens the eyes of remote + generations. This beautiful and--to our notion--finely-expressed + sentiment was suggested to our mind in turning over the pages of + Rev. Dr. McFerrin's _Confederate Primer_, which we briefly noticed + yesterday. We feel that we then passed too hastily over a work so + grand in its conception.... The _Primer_, after giving the alphabet + in due form, offers some little rhymes for youngsters, which are + perfect nosegays of sentiment, of which the following will serve + as samples: + + N. + + At Nashville's fall + We sinned all. + + T. + + At Number Ten + We sinned again. + + F. + + Thy purse to mend, + Old Floyd, attend. + + L. + + Abe Lincoln bold, + Our ports doth hold. + + D. + + Jeff Davis tells a lie, + And so must you and I. + + I. + + Isham doth mourn + His case forlorn. + + P. + + Brave Pillow's flight + Is out of sight. + + B. + + Buell doth play, + And after slay. + + O. + + Yon Oak will be the gallows-tree + Of Richmond's fallen majesty. + + + +Governor Ishain Harris 'catches it' in the following extract from the +Easy Reading Lessons for Children: + + +'LESSON FIRST. + +'THE SMART DIX-IE BOY. + + 'Once there was a lit-tle boy, on-ly four years old. His name was + Dix-ie. His fa-ther's name was I-sham, and his moth-er's name was + All-sham. Dix-ie was ver-y smart, He could drink whis-ky, fight + chick-ens, play po-ker, and cuss his moth-er. When he was on-ly two + years old, he could steal su-gar, hook pre-serves, drown kit-tens, + and tell lies like a man. By and by Dix-ie died, and went to the + bad place. But the dev-il would not let Dix-ie stay there, for he + said: 'When you get big, Dix-ie, you would be head-devil yourself.' + All little Reb-els ought to be like Dix-ie, and so they will, if + they will stud-y the _Con-fed-e-rate Prim-er_.' + +Very good, too, is the powerful and thrilling sermon on the 'Curse of +Cowardice,' delivered by the Rev. Dr. Meroz Armageddon Baldwin, from +which we take 'the annexed:' + + 'Then there is Gideon Pillow, who has undertaken a contract for + digging that 'last ditch,' of which you have heard so much. I am + afraid that the white 'feathers will fly' whenever _that_ Case is + opened, and that Pillow will give us the slip. 'The sword of the + Lord' isn't 'the sword of Gideon' Pillow--_that's_ certain--so I + shall bolster him up no longer. Gideon is 'a cuss,' and a 'cuss of + cowardice.'' + +We are glad to see that the good cause has so stalwart and keen a +defender in Tennessee. + + * * * * * + +We have our opinion that the following anecdote is true. If not, it is +'well found'--or founded. + +Not long since, an eminent 'Conserve' of Boston was arguing with a +certain eminent official in Washington, drilling away, of course, on the +old pro-slavery, pro-Southern, pro-give-it-up platform. + +'But what _can_ you do with the Southerners?' he remarked, for 'the +frequenth' time. 'You can't conquer them--you can't reconcile them--you +can't bring them back--you can't do any thing with them.' + +'But we may _annihilate_ them,' was the crushing reply. + +And CONSERVE took his hat and departed. + +It is, when we come to facts, really remarkable that it has not occurred +to the world that there _can_ be but one solution to a dispute which has +gone so far. _There is no stopping this war._ Secession is an +impossibility. If we _willed_ it, we could not prevent 'an institutional +race' from absorbing one which has no accretive principle of growth. It +is thought, as we write, that during the week preceding July 4th, +_seventy thousand_ of the Secession army perished! They are exhausting, +annihilating themselves; and by whom will the vacancy be filled? Not by +the children of States which, under the old system, fell behindhand in +population. By whom, then? By Northern men and European emigrants, of +course. + +But European intervention? If Louis Napoleon wants to keep his crown--if +England wishes Europe to remain quiet--if they both dread our good +friend Russia, who in event of a war would 'annex,' for aught we can +see, all Austria and an illimitable share of the East--if they wish to +avoid such an upstirring, riot, and infernal carnival of revolution as +the world never saw--they will let us alone. + +The London _Herald_ declares that 'America is a nuisance among nations!' +When they undertake to meddle with us, they will find us one. We would +not leave them a ship on the sea or a seaboard town un-ruined. The whole +world would wail one wild ruin, and there should be the smoke as of +nations, when despotism should dare to lay its hand on the sacred cause +of freedom. For we of the North are living and dying in that cause which +never yet went backward, and we shall prevail, though the powers of all +Europe and all the powers of darkness should ally against us. Let them +come. They do but bring grapes to the wine-press of the Lord; and it +will be a bloody vintage which will be pressed forth in that day, as the +great cause goes marching on. + + * * * * * + +Let no one imagine that our military draft has been one whit too great. +Our great folly hitherto has been to underrate the power of the enemy. +In the South every male who can bear arms is now either bearing them or +otherwise directly aiding the rebellion. When the sheriffs of every +county in the seceding States made their returns to their Secretary of +War, they reported one million four hundred thousand men capable of +bearing arms. And they have the arms and will use them. It is 'an united +rising of the people,' such as the world has seldom seen. + +But then it is _all_ they can do--it is the last card and the _last_ +man, and if we make one stupendous effort, we must inevitably crush it. +There is no other course--it is drag or be dragged, hammer or anvil now. +If we do not beat _them_ thoroughly and completely, they will make us +rue the day that ever we were born. + +The South is stronger than we thought, and its unity and ferocity add to +its strength. It will never be conciliated--it must be crushed. When we +have gained the victory, we can be what our foes never were to +us--generous and merciful. + + * * * * * + +A GENTLEMAN of Massachusetts, who has held a position in McClellan's +army that gave him an opportunity to know whereof he speaks, states that +for weeks, while the army on the Peninsula were in a grain-growing +country, surrounded by fields of wheat and oats belonging to well-known +rebels, the Commissary Department was not allowed to turn its cattle +into a rich pasturage of young grain, from the fear of offending the +absent rebel owners, or of using in any way the property of Our Southern +Brethren in arms against us. The result was, that the cattle kept with +the army for the use of our hard-worked soldiers, were penned up, and +half-starved on the forage carried in the regular subsistence trains, +and the men got mere skin and bones for beef. + + * * * * * + +So endeth the month. The rest with the next. But may we, in conclusion, +beg sundry kind correspondents to have patience? Time is scant with us, +and labor fast and hard. Our editorial friends who have kindly cheered +us by applauding 'the outspoken and straightforward young magazine,' +will accept our most grateful thanks. It has seldom happened to any +journal to be so genially and _warmly_ commended as we have been since +our entrance on the stormy field of political discussion. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 6: The _dingo_, or native dog of Australia, looks like a cross +between the fox or wolf and the shepherd-dog; they generally hunt in +packs, and destroy great numbers of sheep. I have never eaten one.] + + + + +THE + +CONTINENTAL MONTHLY + +THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY has passed its experimental ordeal, and +stands firmly established in popular regard. It was started at a period +when any new literary enterprise was deemed almost foolhardy, but the +publisher believed that the time had arrived for just such a Magazine. +Fearlessly advocating the doctrine of ultimate and gradual Emancipation, +for the sake of the UNION and the WHITE MAN, it has +found favor in quarters where censure was expected, and patronage where +opposition only was looked for. While holding firmly to its _own +opinions_, it has opened its pages to POLITICAL WRITERS _of +widely different views_, and has made a feature of employing the +literary labors of the _younger_ race of American writers. How much has +been gained by thus giving, practically, the fullest freedom to the +expression of opinion, and by the infusion of fresh blood into +literature, has been felt from month to month in its constantly +increasing circulation. + +The most eminent of our Statesmen have furnished THE +CONTINENTAL many of its political articles, and the result is, it +has not given labored essays fit only for a place in ponderous +encyclopedias, but fresh, vigorous, and practical contributions on men +and things as they exist. + +It will be our effort to go on in the path we have entered, and as a +guarantee of the future, we may point to the array of live and brilliant +talent which has brought so many encomiums on our Magazine. The able +political articles which have given it so much reputation will be +continued in each issue, together with the new Novel by Richard B. +Kimball, the eminent author of the 'Under-Currents of Wall-Street,' 'St. +Leger,' etc., entitled. + + +WAS HE SUCCESSFUL? + +An account of the Life and Conduct of Hiram Meeker, one of the leading +men in the mercantile community, and 'a bright and shining light' in the +Church, recounting what he did, and how he made his money. This work +excels the previous brilliant productions of this author. In the present +number is also commenced a new Serial by the author of 'Among the +Pines,' entitled. + + +A MERCHANT'S STORY, + +which will depict Southern _white_ society, and be a truthful history of +some eminent Northern merchants who are largely in 'the cotton trade and +sugar line.' + +The UNION--The Union of ALL THE STATES--that indicates +our politics. To be content with no ground lower than the highest--that +is the standard of our literary character. + +We hope all who are friendly to the spread of our political views, and +all who are favorable to the diffusion of a live, fresh, and energetic +literature, will lend us their aid to increase our circulation. There is +not one of our readers who may not influence one or two more, and there +is in every town in the loyal States some active person whose time might +be justifiably employed in procuring subscribers to our work. To +encourage such to act for us we offer the following very liberal + + + TERMS TO CLUBS. + + + Two copies for one year, Five dollars. + Three copies for one year, Six dollars. + Six copies for one year, Eleven dollars. + Eleven copies for one year, Twenty dollars. + Twenty copies for one year, Thirty-six dollars. + + PAID IN ADVANCE. + + _Postage, Thirty-six Cents a year_, TO BE PAID BY THE SUBSCRIBER. + + SINGLE COPIES. + + Three Dollars a year, IN ADVANCE.--_Postage paid by the Publisher_. + + J. R. GILMORE, 532 Broadway, New-York, + and 110 Tremont Street, Boston. + + CHARLES T. EVANS, 532 Broadway, New-York, General Agent. + + + [Illustration: pointing finger] Any person sending us Three Dollars, for one year's subscription to "The + Continental," commencing with the July number, will receive the Magazine and + "Among the Pines," cloth edition; both free of postage. + + + + * * * * * + + +[Illustration: THE FINEST FARMING LANDS WHEAT CORN COTTON FRUITS & +VEGETABLES] + +~EQUAL TO ANY IN THE WORLD!!!~ + +MAY BE PROCURED + +~At FROM $8 to $12 PER ACRE,~ + +Near Markets, Schools, Railroads, Churches, and all the blessings of +Civilization. + +1,200,000 Acres, in Farms of 40, 80, 120, 160 Acres and upwards, in +ILLINOIS, the Garden State of America. + + * * * * * + +The Illinois Central Railroad Company offer, ON LONG CREDIT, the +beautiful and fertile PRAIRIE LANDS lying along the whole line of their +Railroad. 700 MILES IN LENGTH, upon the most Favorable Terms for +enabling Farmers, Manufacturers, Mechanics and Workingmen to make for +themselves and their families a competency, and a HOME they can call +THEIR OWN, as will appear from the following statements: + +ILLINOIS. + +Is about equal in extent to England, with a population of 1,722,666, and +a soil capable of supporting 20,000,000. No State in the Valley of the +Mississippi offers so great an inducement to the settler as the State of +Illinois. There is no part of the world where all the conditions of +climate and soil so admirably combine to produce those two great +staples, CORN and WHEAT. + +CLIMATE. + +Nowhere can the Industrious farmer secure such immediate results from +his labor as on these deep, rich, loamy soils, cultivated with so much +ease. The climate from the extreme southern part of the State to the +Terre Haute, Alton and St. Louis Railroad, a distance of nearly 200 +miles, is well adapted to Winter. + +WHEAT, CORN, COTTON, TOBACCO. + +Peaches, Pears, Tomatoes, and every variety of fruit and vegetables is +grown in great abundance, from which Chicago and other Northern markets +are furnished from four to six weeks earlier than their immediate +vicinity. Between the Terre Haute, Alton & St. Louis Railway and the +Kankakee and Illinois Rivers, (a distance of 115 miles on the Branch, +and 136 miles on the Main Trunk,) lies the great Corn and Stock raising +portion of the State. + +THE ORDINARY YIELD + +of Corn is from 60 to 80 bushels per acre. Cattle, Horses, Mules, Sheep +and Hogs are raised here at a small cost, and yield large profits. It is +believed that no section of country presents greater inducements for +Dairy Farming than the Prairies of Illinois, a branch of farming to +which but little attention has been paid, and which must yield sure +profitable results. Between the Kankakee and Illinois Rivers, and +Chicago and Dunleith, (a distance of 56 miles on the Branch and 147 +miles by the Main Trunk,) Timothy Hay, Spring Wheat, Corn, &c., are +produced in great abundance. + +AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS. + +The Agricultural products of Illinois are greater than those of any +other State. The Wheat crop of 1861 was estimated at 35,000,000 bushels, +while the Corn crop yields not less than 140,000,000 bushels besides the +crop of Oats, Barley, Rye, Buckwheat, Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, +Pumpkins, Squashes, Flax, Hemp, Peas, Clover, Cabbage, Beets, Tobacco, +Sorgheim, Grapes, Peaches, Apples, &c., which go to swell the vast +aggregate of production in this fertile region. Over Four Million tons +of produce were sent out the State of Illinois during the past year. + +STOCK RAISING. + +In Central and Southern Illinois uncommon advantages are presented for +the extension of Stock raising. All kinds of Cattle, Horses, Mules, +Sheep, Hogs, &c., of the best breeds, yield handsome profits; large +fortunes have already been made, and the field is open for others to +enter with the fairest prospects of like results. Dairy Farming also +presents its inducements to many. + +CULTIVATION OF COTTON. + +The experiments in Cotton culture are of very great promise. Commencing +in latitude 39 deg. 30 min. (see Mattoon on the Branch, and Assumption +on the Main Line), the Company owns thousands of acres well adapted to +the perfection of this fibre. A settler having a family of young +children, can turn their youthful labor to a most profitable account in +the growth and perfection of this plant. + +THE ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD + +Traverses the whole length of the State, from the banks of the +Mississippi and Lake Michigan to the Ohio. As its name imports, the +Railroad runs through the centre of the State, and on either side of the +road along its whole length lie the lands offered for sale. + +CITIES, TOWNS, MARKETS, DEPOTS. + +There are Ninety-eight Depots on the Company's Railway, giving about one +every seven miles. Cities, Towns and Villages are situated at convenient +distances throughout the whole route, where every desirable commodity +may be found as readily as in the oldest cities of the Union, and where +buyers are to be met for all kinds of farm produce. + +EDUCATION. + +Mechanics and working-men will find the free school system encouraged by +the State, and endowed with a large revenue for the support of the +schools. Children can live in sight of the school, the college, the +church, and grow up with the prosperity of the leading State in the +Great Western Empire. + + * * * * * + +PRICES AND TERMS OF PAYMENT--ON LONG CREDIT. + + 80 acres at $10 per acre, with interest at 6 per ct. annually + on the following terms: + + Cash payment $48 00 + + Payment in one year 48 00 + " in two years 48 00 + " in three years 48 00 + " in four years 236 00 + " in five years 224 00 + " in six years 212 00 + + + 40 acres, at $10 00 per acre: + + Cash payment $24 00 + + Payment in one year 24 00 + " in two years 24 00 + " in three years 24 00 + " in four years 118 00 + " in five years 112 00 + " in six years 106 00 + + + * * * * * + + +Number 10 25 Cents. + +The + +Continental + +Monthly + + +Devoted To Literature and National Policy. + + + +OCTOBER, 1862. + + + +NEW-YORK AND BOSTON: +J. R. GILMORE, 532 BROADWAY, NEW-YORK, +AND 110 TREMONT STREET, BOSTON. +NEW-YORK: HENRY DEXTER AND SINCLAIR TOUSEY. +PHILADELPHIA: T. B. CALLENDER AND A. WINCH. + + + + +CONTENTS.--No. X. + + The Constitution as it Is--The Union as it Was! C. S. Henry, LL.D., 377 + Maccaroni and Canvas. Henry P. Leland, 383 + Sir John Suckling, 397 + London Fogs and London Poor, 404 + A Military Nation. Charles G. Leland, 413 + Tom Winter's Story. Geo. W. Chapman, 416 + The White Hills in October. Miss C. M. Sedgwick, 423 + Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-Two, U. S. Johnson, 442 + Flower-Arranging, 444 + Southern Hate of the North. Horace Greeley, 448 + A Merchant's Story. Edmund Kirke, 451 + The Union. Hon. Robert J. Walker, 457 + Our Wounded. C. K. Tuckerman, 465 + A Southern Review. Charles G. Leland, 466 + Was He Successful? Richard B. Kimball, 470 + Literary Notices, 478 + Editor's Table, 481 + + +ANNOUNCEMENT. + +The Proprietors of THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY, warranted by its +great success, have resolved to increase its influence and usefulness by +the following changes: + +The Magazine has become the property of an association of men of +character and large means. Devoted to the NATIONAL CAUSE, it +will ardently and unconditionally support the UNION. Its scope +will be enlarged by articles relating to our public defenses, Army and +Navy, gunboats, railroads, canals, finance, and currency. The cause of +gradual emancipation and colonization will be cordially sustained. The +literary character of the Magazine will be improved, and nothing which +talent, money, and industry combined can achieve, will be omitted. + +The political department will be controlled by Hon. ROBERT J. +WALKER and Hon. FREDERIC P. STANTON, of Washington, D.C. +Mr. WALKER, after serving nine years as Senator, and four years +as Secretary of the Treasury, was succeeded in the Senate by +JEFFERSON DAVIS. Mr. STANTON served ten years in +Congress, acting as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee and of Naval +Affairs. Mr. WALKER was succeeded as Governor of Kansas by Mr. +STANTON, and both were displaced by Mr. BUCHANAN, for +refusing to force slavery upon that people by fraud and forgery. The +literary department of the Magazine will be under the control of +CHARLES GODFREY LELAND of Boston, and EDMUND KIRKE of +New-York. Mr. LELAND is the present accomplished Editor of the +Magazine. Mr. KIRKE is one of its constant contributors, but +better known as the author of 'Among the Pines' the great picture true +to life, of Slavery as it is. + +THE CONTINENTAL, while retaining all the old corps of writers, +who have given it so wide a circulation, will be reinforced by new +contributors, greatly distinguished as statesmen, scholars, and savans. + + +Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by JAMES R. +GILMORE, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United +States for the Southern District of New-York. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, + September, 1862, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY *** + +***** This file should be named 20647-8.txt or 20647-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/6/4/20647/ + +Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Janet Blenkinship and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net +(This file was produced from images generously made +available by Cornell University Digital Collections) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 + Devoted to Literature and National Policy. + +Author: Various + +Release Date: February 22, 2007 [EBook #20647] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY *** + + + + +Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Janet Blenkinship and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net +(This file was produced from images generously made +available by Cornell University Digital Collections) + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p> + + + + + +<h2>THE</h2> + +<h1>CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:</h1> + +<h4>DEVOTED TO</h4> + +<h2>Literature and National Policy</h2> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">Vol. II.</span>—SEPTEMBER, 1862.—<span class="smcap">No. III.</span></h3> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + + +<div class="centered"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="2" width="65%" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents"> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#HENRY_THOMAS_BUCKLE">HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#AN_ANGEL_ON_EARTH">AN ANGEL ON EARTH.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#THE_MOLLY_OMOLLY_PAPERS">THE MOLLY O'MOLLY PAPERS.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#THE_MOLLY_OMOLLY_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#THE_MOLLY_OMOLLY_IX">CHAPTER IX.</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#THE_MOLLY_OMOLLY_X">CHAPTER X.</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#THAT_LAST_DITCH">'THAT LAST DITCH.'</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#HOPEFUL_TACKETT_HIS_MARK">HOPEFUL TACKETT—HIS MARK.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#JOHN_BULL_TO_JONATHAN">JOHN BULL TO JONATHAN.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#JONATHAN_TO_JOHN_BULL">JONATHAN TO JOHN BULL.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#AMERICAN_STUDENT_LIFE">AMERICAN STUDENT LIFE.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#GO_IN_AND_WIN">GO IN AND WIN.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#JOHN_NEAL">JOHN NEAL.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#THE_SOLDIER_AND_THE_CIVILIAN">THE SOLDIER AND THE CIVILIAN.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#VOLUNTEER_BOYS_1750">VOLUNTEER BOYS. [1750.]</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#AUTHOR-BORROWING">AUTHOR-BORROWING.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#INTERVENTION">INTERVENTION.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#MACCARONI_AND_CANVAS">MACCARONI AND CANVAS.—VII.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#TITIANO">'A REEL TITIANO FOR SAL.'</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#SO_LONG">SO LONG!</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#ROMAN_THEATRES">ROMAN THEATRES.</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#ART">THE BEARDS OF ART.</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#PAINTER">A CALICO-PAINTER.</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#REDIVIVUS">REDIVIVUS.</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#PATRON">A PATRON OF ART.</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#ANEZKA">ANEZKA OD PRAHA.</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#ANTHONY_TROLLOPE_ON_AMERICA">ANTHONY TROLLOPE ON AMERICA.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#UP_AND_ACT">UP AND ACT.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#REMINISCENCES_OF_ANDREW_JACKSON">REMINISCENCES OF ANDREW JACKSON.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#SHAKSPEARES_CARICATURE_OF_RICHARD_III">SHAKSPEARE'S CARICATURE OF RICHARD III.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#THE_NEGRO_IN_THE_REVOLUTION">THE NEGRO IN THE REVOLUTION.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#A_MERCHANTS_STORY">A MERCHANT'S STORY.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#TAKE_CARE">TAKE CARE!</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#SHOULDER-STRAPS">SHOULDER-STRAPS;</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#CHAPTER_IA">CHAPTER I.</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#CHAPTER_IIA">CHAPTER II.</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#THE_CHILDREN_IN_THE_WOOD">THE CHILDREN IN THE WOOD.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#NATIONAL_UNITY">NATIONAL UNITY.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#WAS_HE_SUCCESSFUL">WAS HE SUCCESSFUL?</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#SEVENTH">CHAPTER SEVENTH.—HIRAM MEEKER VISITS MR. BURNS</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#AN_ARMY_CONTRACTOR">AN ARMY CONTRACTOR.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#LITERARY_NOTICES">LITERARY NOTICES.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#EDITORS_TABLE">EDITOR'S TABLE.</a></td></tr> +</table></div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="HENRY_THOMAS_BUCKLE" id="HENRY_THOMAS_BUCKLE"></a>HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE.</h2> + + +<p>The death of Henry Thomas Buckle, at this period of his career, is no +ordinary calamity to the literary and philosophical world. Others have +been cut short in the midst of a great work, but their books being +narrative merely, may close at almost any period, and be complete; or +others after them may take up the pen and conclude that which was so +abruptly terminated. So it was with Macaulay; he was fascinating, and +his productions were literally devoured by readers of elevated taste, +though they disagreed almost entirely with his conclusions. His volumes +were read—as one reads Dickens, or Holmes, or De Quincey—to amuse in +leisure hours.</p> + +<p>But such are not the motives with which we take up the ponderous tomes +of the historian of Civilization in England. He had no heroes to +immortalize by extravagant eulogy, no prejudices seeking vent to cover +the name of any man with infamy. He knew no William to convert into a +demi-god; no Marlborough who was the embodiment of all human vices. His +mind, discarding the ordinary prejudices of the historian, took a wider +range, and his researches were not into the transactions of a particular +monarch or minister, as such, but into the <i>laws</i> of human action, and +their results upon the civilization of the race. Hence, while he wrote +history, he plunged into all the depths of philosophy; and thus it is, +that his work, left unfinished by himself, can never be completed by +another. It is a work which will admit no broken link from its +commencement to its conclusion.</p> + +<p>Mr. Buckle was born in London, in the early part of the year 1824, and +was consequently about thirty-eight years of age at the time of his +death. His father was a wealthy gentleman of the metropolis, and +thoroughly educated, and the historian was an only son. Devoted to +literature himself, it is not surprising that the parent spared neither +money nor labor to educate his child. He did not, however, follow the +usual course; did not hamper the youthful mind by the narrow routine of +the English academy, nor did he make him a Master of Arts at Oxford or +Cambridge.</p> + +<p>His early education was superintended by his father directly, but +afterward private teachers were employed. But Mr. Buckle was by nature a +close student, and much that he possessed he acquired without a tutor, +as his energetic, self-reliant nature rendered him incapable of ever +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>seeing insurmountable difficulties before him. By this means he became +what the students of Oxford rarely are, both learned and liberal. As he +mingled freely with the people, during his youth, a democratic sympathy +entwined itself with his education, and is manifested in every page of +his writings.</p> + +<p>Mr. Buckle never married. After he had commenced his great work, he +found no time to enjoy society, no hours of leisure and repose. His +whole soul was engaged in the accomplishment of one great purpose, and +nothing which failed to contribute directly to the object nearest his +heart, received a moment's consideration. He collected around him a +library of twenty-two thousand volumes, all choice standard works, in +Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and English, with all of +which languages he was familiar. It was the best private collection of +books, said some one, in England. It was from this that the historian +drew that inexhaustible array of facts, and procured the countless +illustrations, with which the two volumes of his History of Civilization +abound.</p> + +<p>At what age he first conceived the project of writing his history, is +not yet publicly known. He never figured in the literary world previous +to the publication of his first volume. He appears to have early grasped +at more than a mere temporary fame, and determined to stake all upon a +single production. His reading was always systematic, and exceedingly +thorough; and as he early became charmed with the apparent harmony of +all nature, whether in the physical, intellectual, or moral world, he at +once commenced tracing out the laws of the universe, to which, in his +mind, all things were subject, with a view of illustrating that +beautiful harmony, every where prevailing, every where unbroken. All +this influenced every thing, 'and mind and gross matter, each performed +their parts, in relative proportions, and according to the immutable +laws of progress.'</p> + +<p>With a view of discussing his subject thoroughly, and establishing his +theory beyond controversy, as he believed, he proposed, before referring +to the <i>History of Civilization in England</i>, to discover, so far as +possible, all the laws of political and social economy, and establish +the relative powers and influence of the moral faculties, the intellect, +and external nature, and determine the part each takes in contributing +to the progress of the world. To this, the first volume is exclusively +devoted; and it is truly astonishing to observe the amount of research +displayed. The author is perfectly familiar, not only with a vast array +of facts of history, but with the principal discoveries of every branch +of science; and as he regards all things as a unit, he sets out by +saying that no man is competent to write history who is not familiar +with the physical universe. A fascinating writer, with a fair industry, +can write narrative, but not history.</p> + +<p>This is taking in a wide field; and Mr. Buckle may be regarded as +somewhat egotistic and vain; but the fact that he proves himself, in a +great degree, the possessor of the knowledge he conceives requisite, +rather than asserts it, is a sufficient vindication against all +aspersions.</p> + +<p>Mr. Buckle regards physical influences as the primary motive power which +produces civilization; but these influences are fixed in their nature, +and are few in number, and always operate with equal power. The capacity +of the intellect is unlimited; it grows and expands, partially impelled +by surrounding physical circumstances, and partially by its own second +suggestions, growing out of those primary impressions received from +nature. The moral influence, the historian asserts, is the weakest of +the three, which control the destiny of man. Not an axiom now current, +but was known and taught in the days of Plato, of Zoroaster, and of +Confucius; yet how wide the gap intervening between the civilization of +the different eras! Moral without intellectual culture, is nothing; but +with the latter, the former comes as a necessary sequence.</p> + +<p>All individual examples are rejected. As all things act in harmony, we +can only draw deductions by regarding the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> race in the aggregate, and +studying its progress through long periods of time. Statistics is the +basis of all generalizations, and it is only from a close comparison of +these, for ages, that the harmonious movement of all things can be +clearly proved.</p> + +<p>Mr. Buckle was a fatalist in every sense of the word. Marriages, deaths, +births, crime—all are regulated by Law. The moral status of a community +is illustrated by the number of depredations committed, and their +character. Following the suggestions of M. Quetelot, he brings forward +an array of figures to prove that not only, in a large community, is +there about the same number of crimes committed each year, but their +character is similar, and even the instruments employed in committing +them are nearly the same. Of course, outside circumstances modify this +slightly—such as financial failures, scarcity of bread, etc., but by a +comparison of long periods of time, these influences recur with perfect +regularity.</p> + +<p>It is not the individual, in any instance, who is the criminal—but +society. The murderer and the suicide are not responsible, but are +merely public executioners. Through them the depravity of the <i>public</i> +finds vent.</p> + +<p>Free Will and Predestination—the two dogmas which have, more than any +others, agitated the public mind—are discussed at length. Of course he +accepts the latter theory, but under a different name. Free Will, he +contends, inevitably leads to aristocracy, and Predestination to +democracy; and the British and Scottish churches are cited as examples +of the effect of the two doctrines on ecclesiastical organizations. The +former is an aristocracy, the latter a democracy.</p> + +<p>No feature of Mr. Buckle's work is so prominent as its democratic +tendencies. The people, and the means by which they can be elevated, +were uppermost in his mind, and he disposes of established usages, and +aristocratic institutions, in a manner far more American than English. +It is this circumstance which has endeared him to the people of this +country, and to the liberals of Germany—the work having been translated +into German. For the same reason, he was severely criticised in England.</p> + +<p>Having devoted the first volume to a discussion of the laws of +civilization, it was his intention to publish two additional volumes, +illustrating them; taking the three countries in which were found +certain prominent characteristics, which he conceived could be fully +accounted for by his theories, but by no other, and above all, by none +founded upon the doctrine of free will and individual responsibility. +These countries were Spain, Scotland, and the United States—nations +which grew up under the most diverse physical influences, and which +present widely different civilizations.</p> + +<p>The volume treating upon Spain and Scotland has been published about a +year; and great was the indignation it created in the latter country. In +Spain it is probable that the work is unknown; but it was caught up by +the Scottish reviewers, who are shocked at any thing outside of regular +routine, and whose only employment seems to be to strangle young +authors. <i>Blackwood</i>, and the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, contained article +after article against the 'accuser' of Scotland; but the writers, +instead of calmly sifting and disproving Mr. Buckle's untenable +theories, new into a rage, and only established two things, to the +intelligent public—their own malice and ignorance.</p> + +<p>Amid all this abuse, our author stood immutable. But once did he ever +condescend to notice his maligners, and then only to expose their +ignorance, at the same time pledging himself never again to refer to +their attacks. A thinking man, he could not but be fully aware that +their style, and self-evident malice, could only add to his reputation.</p> + +<p>As already remarked, he did not write to immortalize a hero, but to +establish an idea; did not labor to please the fancy, but to reach the +understanding; hence we read his books, not as we do<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> the brilliant +productions of Macaulay, the smooth narratives of Prescott, or the +dramatic pages of Bancroft; but his thoughts are so well connected, and +so systematically arranged, that to read a single page, is to insure a +close study of the whole volume. We would not study him for his style, +for although fair, it is not pleasing; we can not glide over his pages +in thoughtless ease; but then, at the close of almost every paragraph, +one must pause and <i>think</i>.</p> + +<p>Being an original writer, Mr. Buckle naturally fell into numerous +errors; but now is not the proper time to refute them. He gives more +than due weight to the powers of nature, in the civilization of man; and +although he probably intimates the fact, yet he does <i>not</i> add that as +the intellect is enlightened, their influences become circumscribed, and +must gradually almost entirely disappear. In the primitive state of the +race, climate, soil, food, and scenery, are all-powerful; but among an +enlightened people, the effects of heat and cold, of barren or +exceedingly productive soils, etc., are entirely modified. This omission +has given his enemies an excellent opportunity for a display of their +refutory powers, of which they have not failed to avail themselves.</p> + +<p>The historian is a theorist, yet no controversialist. He states his +facts, and draws his conclusions, as if no ideas different from his own +had ever been promulgated. He never attempts to show the fallacies of +any other author, but readily understands that if he establishes his +system of philosophy, all contrary ones must fall. How fortunate it +would have been for the human race, if all innovators and reformers had +done the same!</p> + +<p>That which adds to the regrets occasioned by his loss, which must be +entertained by every American, is the circumstance that his forthcoming +volume was to be devoted to the social and political condition of the +United States, as an example of a country in which existed a general +diffusion of knowledge. Knowing, as all his readers do, that his +sympathies are democratic, and in favor of the elevation of the masses, +we had a right to expect a vindication-the first we ever had—from an +English source. At the time of his death he was traveling through Europe +and Asia for his health, intending to arrive in this country in autumn, +to procure facts as a basis for his third volume, and the last of his +introduction.</p> + +<p>Although his work is an unfinished one, it will remain a lasting +monument to the industry of its author. He has done enough to exhibit +the necessity of studying and writing history, henceforth as a +<i>science</i>; and of replacing the chaotic fragments of narrative, called +history, with which the world abounds, by a systematic statement of +facts, and philosophical deductions. Some other author, with sufficient +energy and industry, will—not finish the work of Mr. Buckle, but—write +another in which the faults of the original will be corrected, and the +omissions filled; who will go farther in defining the relative +influences of the three powers which control civilization, during the +different stages of human progress.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="AN_ANGEL_ON_EARTH" id="AN_ANGEL_ON_EARTH"></a>AN ANGEL ON EARTH.</h2> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Die when you may, you will not wear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At heaven's court a form more fair<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Than beauty at your birth has given;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Keep but the lips, the eyes we see,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The voice we hear, and you will be<br /></span> +<span class="i1">An angel ready-made for heaven.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_MOLLY_OMOLLY_PAPERS" id="THE_MOLLY_OMOLLY_PAPERS"></a>THE MOLLY O'MOLLY PAPERS.</h2> + +<h3><a name="THE_MOLLY_OMOLLY_VIII" id="THE_MOLLY_OMOLLY_VIII"></a>VIII.</h3> + + +<p>Better than wealth, better than hosts of friends, better than genius, is +a mind that finds enjoyment in little things—that sucks honey from the +blossom of the weed as well as from the rose—that is not too dainty to +enjoy coarse, everyday fare. I am thankful that, though not born under a +lucky star, I wasn't born under a melancholy one; that, though there +were at my christening no kind fairies to bestow on me all the blessings +of life—there was no malignant elf to 'mingle a curse with every +blessing.' I'd rather have a few drops of pure sweet than an overflowing +cup tinctured with bitterness.</p> + +<p>Not that sorrow has never blown her chill breath on my spirit—yet it +has never been so iced over that it would not here and there bubble +forth with a song of gladness.... There are depths of woe that I have +never fathomed, or rather, to which I have never sunken—for there are +no line and plummet to sound the dreary depths—yet the waves have +overwhelmed me, as every human being, but I soon rose above them.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'One by one thy griefs shall meet thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Do not fear an armed band;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One shall fade as others greet thee—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Shadows passing through the land.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I have found this true—I know there are some to whom it is not +true—that, though sorrows come not to them 'in battalions,' the shadow +of the one huge Grief is ever on their path, or on their heart; that at +their down-sittings and their up-risings it is with them, even darkening +to them the night, and making them almost curse the sunshine; for it is +ever between them and it—not a mere shadow, nor yet a substance, but a +<i>vacuum of light</i>, casting also a shadow. Neither substance nor shadow, +it must be a phantom—it may be of a dead sin—and against such, +exorcism avails. I opine this exorcism lies in no cabalistic words, no +crossing of the forehead, no holy name, in nothing that one can do unto +or for himself, but in entire self-forgetfulness—in doing for, in +sympathizing with, others. So shall this Grief step aside from your +path, get away from between you and the sunshine, till finally it shall +have vanished.</p> + +<p>I know—not, however, by experience—that a great <i>sorrow-berg</i>, with +base planted in the under-current of a man's being, has been borne at a +fearful rate, right up against all his nobly-built hopes and projects, +making a complete wreck of them. May God help him then! But must his +being ever after be like the lonely Polar Sea on which no bark was ever +launched?</p> + +<p>But surely we have troubles enough without borrowing from the future or +the past, as we constantly do. It is often said, it is a good thing that +we can't look into the future. One would think that that mysterious +future, on which we are the next moment to enter, in which we are to +live our everyday life—one would think it a store-house of evils. Do +you expect no good—are there for you no treasures there?</p> + +<p>How often life has been likened to a journey, a pilgrimage, with its +deserts to cross, its mountains to climb!... The road to—— Lake, +distant from my home some eight or ten miles, partly lies through a +mountain pass. You drive a few miles—and a beautiful drive it is, with +its pines and hemlocks, their dark foliage contrasting with the blue +sky—on either hand high mountains; now at your left, then at your +right, and again at your left runs now swiftly over stones, now +lingering in hollows, making good fishing-places, a creek, that has come +many glad miles on its way to the river. But how are you to get over +that mountain just before you? Your horse can't draw you up its rocky, +perpendicular front! Never mind, drive along—there, the mountain is +behind you—the road<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> has wound around it. Thus it is with many a +mountain difficulty in our way, we never have it to climb. There is now +and then one, though, that we do have to climb, and we can't be drawn or +carried up by a faithful nag, but our weary feet must toil up its steep +and rugged side. But many a pilgrim before us has climbed it, and we +will not faint on the way. 'What man has done, man may do.' ... Yet, +till I have found out to a certainty, I never will be sure that the +mountain that seemingly blocks up my way, <i>has not a path winding round +it</i>.</p> + +<p>Then the past.... Some one says we are happier our whole life for having +spent one pleasant day. Keats says: 'A thing of beauty is a joy +<i>forever</i>.' I believe this: to me the least enjoyment has been like a +grain of musk dropped into my being, sending its odor into all my +after-life—it may be that centuries hence it will not have lost its +fragrance. Who knows?</p> + +<p>But sorrows—they should, like bitter medicines, be washed down with +sweet; we should get the taste of them out of our mouth as soon as +possible.</p> + +<p>We are as apt to borrow trouble from the might-have-beens of our past +life as from any thing else. We mourn over the chances we've missed—the +happiness that eel-like has slipped through our fingers. This is folly; +for generally there are so many ifs in the way, that nearly all the +might-have-beens turn into couldn't-have-beens. Even if they do not, it +is well for us when we don't know them.... The object of our weary +search glides past us like Gabriel past Evangeline, so near, did we only +know it: happy is it for us if we do not, like her, too late learn it; +for</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Of all sad words of tongue or pen,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The saddest are these—<i>it might have been!</i>'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>So sad are they, that they would be a suitable refrain to the song of a +lost spirit.</p> + +<p>Well, I might have been ——, but am ——</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Molly O'Molly</span>.</p> + + +<h3><a name="THE_MOLLY_OMOLLY_IX" id="THE_MOLLY_OMOLLY_IX"></a>IX.</h3> + +<p>If one wishes to know how barren one's life is of events, the best way +is to try to keep a journal. I tried it in my boarding-school days. With +a few exceptions, the record of one day's outer life was sufficient for +the week; the rest might have been written <i>ditto, ditto</i>. Even then, +the events were so trifling that, like entries in a ledger, they might +have been classed as <i>sundries</i>. How I tried to get up thoughts and +feelings to make out a decent day's chronicle! How I threw in profound +remarks on what I had read, sketches of character, caricatures of the +teachers, even condescending to give the bill of fare; here, too, there +might have been a great many <i>dittos</i>. Had I kept a record of my +dream-life, what a variety there would have been! what extravagances, +exceeded by nothing out of the <i>Arabian Nights' Entertainments</i>. Then, +if I could have illuminated each day's page with my own fancy portrait +of myself, the <i>Book of Beauty</i> would not have been a circumstance to my +journal. Certainly, among these portraits would not have been that +plain, snub-nosed daguerreotype, sealed and directed to a dear home +friend; but to the dear home friend no picture in the <i>Book of Beauty</i> +or my fancy journal would have had such charms; and if the daguerreotype +would not have illuminated this journal, it was itself illuminated <i>by +the light of a mother's love</i>. Alas! this light never more can rest on +and irradiate the plain face of Molly O'Molly.</p> + +<p>After all, what a dull, monotonous life ours would be, if within this +outer life there were not the inner life, the 'wheel within the wheel,' +as in Ezekiel's vision. Though this inner wheel is 'lifted up +whithersoever the spirit' wills 'to go,' the outer—unlike that in the +vision—is not also lifted up; perhaps <i>hereafter</i> it will be.</p> + +<p>The Mohammedans believe that, although unseen by mortals, 'the decreed +events of every man's life are impressed in divine characters on his +forehead.' If<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> so, I shouldn't wonder if there was generally a large +margin of forehead left, unless there is a great deal of repetition.... +The record (not the prophecy) of the inner life, though it is +hieroglyphed on the whole face too, is a scant one; not because there is +but little to record, but because only results are chronicled. Like the +<i>Veni, vidi, vici</i>, of Cæsar. <i>Veni</i>; nothing of the weary march. +<i>Vidi</i>; nothing of the doubts, fears, and anxieties. <i>Vici</i>; nothing of +the fierce struggle.</p> + +<p>One thing is certain; though we can not read the divine imprint on the +forehead, we know that either there or on the face, either as prophecy +or record, is written, <i>grief</i>. Grief, the burden of the sadly-beautiful +song of the poet; yet we find, alas! that <i>grief is grief</i>. And the +poet's woe is also the woe of common mortals, though his soul is so +strung that every breeze that sweeps over it is changed to melody. The +wind that wails, and howls, and shrieks around the corners of streets, +among the leafless branches of trees, through desolate houses, is the +same wind that sweeps the silken strings of the Æolian harp.</p> + +<p>Then there is <i>care</i>, most often traced on the face of woman, the care +of responsibility or of work, sometimes of both. A man, however hard he +may labor, if he loses a day, does not always find an accumulation of +work; but with poor, over-worked woman, it is, work or be overwhelmed +with work, as in the punishment of prisoners, it is, pump or drown. I +can not understand how women do get along who, with the family of John +Rogers' wife, assisted only by the eldest daughter, a girl of thirteen, +wash, iron, bake, cook, wash dishes, and sew for the family, coats and +pantaloons included, and that too without the help of a machine. Oh! +that pile of sewing always cut out, to be leveled stitch by stitch; for, +unlike water, it never will find its own level, unless its level be Mont +Blanc, for to such a hight it would reach if left to itself. I could +grow eloquent on the subject, but forbear.</p> + +<p>Croakers to the contrary notwithstanding, there is in the record of our +past lives, or in the prophecy of our future, another word than <i>grief</i> +or <i>care</i>; it is <i>joy</i>. My friend, could your history be truthfully +written, and printed in the old style, are there not many passages that +would shine beautifully in golden letters? I say truthfully written; for +we are so apt to forget our joys, while we remember our griefs. Perhaps +this is because joy and its effects are so evanescent. Leland talks +beautifully of 'the perfumed depths of the lotus-word, <i>joyousness</i>;' +but in this world we only breathe the perfume. Could we eat the +lotus!... The fabled lotus-eater wished never to leave the isle whence +he had plucked it. Wrapped in dreamy selfishness, unnerved for the toil +of reaching the far-off shore, he grew indifferent to country and +friends.... So earth would be to us an enchanted isle. The stern toil by +which we are to reach that better land, our <i>home</i>, would become irksome +to us. It is well for us that we can only breathe the perfume.</p> + +<p>Then, too, the deepest woe we may know—not the highest joy—that is +bliss beyond even our capacity of dreaming. Some one, in regard to the +ladder Jacob saw in his dream, says: 'But alas! he slept at the foot.' +That any ladder should be substantial enough for cumbersome mortality to +climb to heaven, was too great an impossibility even for a dream.</p> + +<p>But read for yourself the faces that swirl through the streets of a +city. Now and then there is one on which the results of all evil +passions are traced. Were it not for the <i>brute</i> in it, it might be +mistaken for the face of a fiend. Though such are few, too many bear the +impress of at least one evil passion. Every passion, unbitted and +unbridled, hurries the soul bound to it—as Mazeppa was bound to the +wild horse—to certain destruction.... But I—as all things hasten to +the end—will mention one word more—the <i>finis</i> of the prophecy—the +<i>stamp on the seal</i> of the record—<i>Death</i>.... We will not dwell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> on it. +Who more than glances at the <i>finis</i>, who studies the plain word stamped +on the seal?</p> + +<p class='author'>Yours, <span class="smcap">Molly O'Molly</span>.</p> + + +<h3><a name="THE_MOLLY_OMOLLY_X" id="THE_MOLLY_OMOLLY_X"></a>X.</h3> + +<p>I have read of a young Indian girl, disguised as her lover, whom she had +assisted to escape from captivity, fleeing from her pursuers, till she +reached the brink of a deep ravine; before her is a perpendicular wall +of rock; behind, the foe, so near that she can hear the crackling of the +dry branches under their tread; yet nearer they come; she almost feels +their breath on her cheek; it is useless to turn at bay; there is hardly +time to measure with her eye the depth of the ravine, or its width. A +step back, another forward, an almost superhuman leap, and she has +cleared the awful chasm.... 'Look before you leap,' is one of caution's +maxims. We may stand looking till it is too late to leap. There are +times when we <i>must</i> put our 'fate to the touch, to win or lose it all;' +there are times when doubt, hesitation, caution is certain destruction. +You are crossing a frozen pond, firm by the shore, but as you near the +centre, the ice beneath your feet begins to crack; hesitate, attempt to +retrace your steps, and you are gone. Did you ever cross a rapid stream +on an unhewn foot-log? You looked down at the swift current, stopped, +turned back, and over you went. You would climb a steep mountain-side. +Half-way up, look not from the dizzy hight, but press on, grasping every +tough laurel and bare root; but hasten, the laurel may break, and you +lose your footing. 'If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all;' but once +resolved to climb, leave thy caution at the foot. Before you give battle +to the enemy, be cautious, reckon well your chances of winning or +losing; above all, be sure of the justice of your cause; but once flung +into the fierce fight, then with <i>'Dieu et mon droit!'</i> for your +battle-cry, let not 'discretion' be <i>any</i> 'part of' your 'valor.'</p> + +<p>Then your careful, hesitating people are cautious where there is no need +of caution, they feel their way on the highways and by-ways of life, as +you have seen a person when fording a stream with whose bed he was +unacquainted. I'd rather fall down and pick myself up a dozen times a +day, than thus grope my way along.</p> + +<p>There is Nancy Primrose. I have good reason to remember her. She was, in +my childhood, always held up to me as a pattern. She used to come to +school with such smooth, clean pantalets, while mine were splashed with +mud, drabbled by the wet grass, or all wrinkles from having been rolled +up. She would go around a rod to avoid a mud-puddle, or if she availed +herself of the board laid down for the benefit of pedestrians, she +never, as I was sure to do, stepped on one end, so the other came down +with a splash. The starch never was taken out of her sun-bonnet by the +rain, for if there was 'a cloud as big as a man's hand,' she took an +umbrella. It was well that she never climbed the mountain-side, for she +would have surely fallen. It was well that she never crossed a foot-log, +unless it was hewn and had a railing, for she would have certainly been +ducked. It was well she never went on thin ice, (she didn't venture till +the other girls had tried it,) she would have broken through. Her +caution, I must say, was of the right kind; it always preceded her +undertaking. She had such a 'wholesome fear of consequences,' that she +never played truant, as one whom I could mention did. Indeed, +antecedents and consequents were always associated in her mind. She +never risked any thing for herself or any one else.... Of course, she is +still <i>Miss</i> Nancy, (I am 'Aunt Molly' to all my friends' children,) +though it is said that she might have been Mrs.——. Mr.——, a widower +of some six months' standing, thinking it time to commence his +probation—the engagement preparatory to being received into the full +matrimonial connection—made some advances toward Miss Nancy, she being +the nearest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> one verging on 'an uncertain age,' (you know widowers +always go the rounds of the old maids.) Though, in a worldly point of +view, he was an eligible match, she, from her fixed habits of caution, +half-hesitated as to whether it was best to receive his attentions—he +got in a hurry (you know widowers are always in a hurry) and married +some one else.... I don't think Miss Nancy would venture to love any man +before marriage—engagements are as liable to be broken as thin ice, and +it isn't best to throw away love. As for her giving it unasked!... How +peacefully her life flows along—or rather, it hardly flows at all, +about as much as a mill-pond—with such a small bit of heaven and earth +reflected in it. Oh! that placidity!—better have some great, heavy, +splashing sorrow thrown into it than that ever calm surface.... As for +me—it was a good thing that I was a girl—rash, never counting the +cost, without caution, it is well that I have to tread the quiet paths +of domestic life. Had I been a boy, thrown out into the rough, dangerous +world, I'd have rushed over the first precipice, breaking my moral, or +physical neck, or both. As it is, had I been like Miss Nancy, I would +have been spared many an agony, and—many an exquisite joy.</p> + +<p>You may be sure that I have well learned all of caution's maxims; they +have, all my life, been dinged into my ears. Now I hate most maxims. +Though generally considered epitomes of wisdom, they should, almost all +of them, be received with a qualification. What is true in one case is +not true in another; what is good for one, is not good for another. You, +as far as you are concerned, in exactly the same manner draw two lines, +one on a plane, the other on a sphere; one line will be straight, the +other curved. So does every truth, even, make a different mark on +different minds. This is one reason that I hate most maxims, they never +accommodate themselves to circumstances or individuals. The maxim that +would make one man a careful economist, would make another a miser. 'One +man's meat is another man's poison;' one man's truth is another man's +falsehood.</p> + +<p>But how many mistaken ideas have been embodied in maxims—fossilized, I +may say! It would have been better to let them die the natural death of +falsehood, and they might have sprung up in new forms of truth—truth +that never dies. What a vitality it has—a vitality that can not be +dried out by time, nor crushed out by violence. You know how in old +mummy-cases have been found grains of wheat, which, being sown, sprang +up, and bore a harvest like that which waved in the breeze on the banks +of the Nile. You know how God's truth—all truth is God's truth—was +shut up in that old mummy-case, the monastery, and how, when found by +one Luther, and sown broadcast, it sprang up, and now there is hardly an +island, or a river's bank, on which it has not fallen and does not bear +abundant fruit. The 'heel of despotism' could not crush out its life; +ages hence it will be said of it: 'It still lives.'</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">And still lives, yours,</span></p> + +<p class='author'><span class="smcap">Molly O'Molly.</span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THAT_LAST_DITCH" id="THAT_LAST_DITCH"></a>'THAT LAST DITCH.'</h2> + + +<p>Many reasons have been assigned for the <i>Chivalry's</i> determining to die +in that last ditch. One William Shakspeare puts into the mouth of +Enobarbus, in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, the best reason we have yet seen. +'Tis thus:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i10">'I will go seek<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Some ditch wherein to die: <span class="smcap">the foul best fits</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">My latter part of life</span>.'<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="HOPEFUL_TACKETT_HIS_MARK" id="HOPEFUL_TACKETT_HIS_MARK"></a>HOPEFUL TACKETT—HIS MARK.</h2> + +<h3>BY RICHARD WOLCOTT, 'TENTH ILLINOIS.'</h3> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'An' the Star-Spangle' Banger in triump' shall wave<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O! the lan dov the free-e-e, an' the ho mov the brave.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Thus sang Hopeful Tackett, as he sat on his little bench in the little +shop of Herr Kordwäner, the village shoemaker. Thus he sang, not +artistically, but with much fervor and unction, keeping time with his +hammer, as he hammered away at an immense 'stoga.' And as he sang, the +prophetic words rose upon the air, and were wafted, together with an +odor of new leather and paste-pot, out of the window, and fell upon the +ear of a ragged urchin with an armful of hand-bills.</p> + +<p>'Would you lose a leg for it, Hope?' he asked, bringing to bear upon +Hopeful a pair of crossed eyes, a full complement of white teeth, and a +face promiscuously spotted with its kindred dust.</p> + +<p>'For the Banger?' replied Hopeful; 'guess I would. Both on 'em—an' a +head, too.'</p> + +<p>'Well, here's a chance for you.' And he tossed him a hand-bill.</p> + +<p>Hopeful laid aside his hammer and his work, and picked up the hand-bill; +and while he is reading it, let us briefly describe him. Hopeful is not +a beauty, and he knows it; and though some of the rustic wits call him +'Beaut,' he is well aware that they intend it for irony. His countenance +runs too much to nose—rude, amorphous nose at that—to be classic, and +is withal rugged in general outline and pimply in spots. His hair is +decidedly too dingy a red to be called, even by the utmost stretch of +courtesy, auburn; dry, coarse, and pertinaciously obstinate in its +resistance to the civilizing efforts of comb and brush. But there is a +great deal of big bone and muscle in him, and he may yet work out a +noble destiny. Let us see.</p> + +<p>By the time he had spelled out the hand-bill, and found that +Lieutenant —— was in town and wished to enlist recruits for +Company ——, —— Regiment, it was nearly sunset; and he took off his +apron, washed his hands, looked at himself in the piece of looking-glass +that stuck in the window—a defiant look, that said that he was not +afraid of all that nose—took his hat down from its peg behind the door, +and in spite of the bristling resistance of his hair, crowded it down +over his head, and started for his supper. And as he walked he mused +aloud, as was his custom, addressing himself in the second person, +'Hopeful, what do you think of it? They want more soldiers, eh? Guess +them fights at Donelson and Pittsburg Lannen 'bout used up some o' them +ridgiments. By Jing!' (Hopeful had been piously brought up, and his +emphatic exclamations took a mild form.) 'Hopeful, 'xpect you'll have to +go an' stan' in some poor feller's shoes. 'Twon't do for them there +blasted Seceshers to be killin' off our boys, an' no one there to pay +'em back. It's time this here thing was busted! Hopeful, you an't +pretty, an' you an't smart; but you used to be a mighty nasty hand with +a shot-gun. Guess you'll have to try your hand on old Borey's +[Beauregard's] chaps; an' if you ever git a bead on one, he'll enter his +land mighty shortly. What do you say to goin'? You wanted to go last +year, but mother was sick, an' you couldn't; and now mother's gone to +glory, why, show your grit an' go. Think about it, any how.'</p> + +<p>And Hopeful did think about it—thought till late at night of the +insulted flag, of the fierce fights and glorious victories, of the dead +and the dying lying out in the pitiless storm, of the dastardly outrages +of rebel fiends—thought of all this, with his great warm heart +overflowing with love for the dear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> old 'Banger,' and resolved to go. +The next morning, he notified his 'boss' of his intention to quit his +service for that of Uncle Sam. The old fellow only opened his eyes very +wide, grunted, brought out the stocking, (a striped relic of the +departed Frau Kordwäner,) and from it counted out and paid Hopeful every +cent that was due him. But there was one thing that sat heavily upon +Hopeful's mind. He was in a predicament that all of us are liable to +fall into—he was in love, and with Christina, Herr Kordwäner's +daughter. Christina was a plump maiden, with a round, rosy face, an +extensive latitude of shoulders, and a general plentitude and solidity +of figure. All these she had; but what had captivated Hopeful's eye was +her trim ankle, as it had appeared to him one morning, encased in a warm +white yarn stocking of her own knitting. From this small beginning, his +great heart had taken in the whole of her, and now he was desperately in +love. Two or three times he had essayed to tell her of his proposed +departure; but every time that the words were coming to his lips, +something rushed up into his throat ahead of them, and he couldn't +speak. At last, after walking home from church with her on Sunday +evening, he held out his hand and blurted out:</p> + +<p>'Well, good-by. We're off to-morrow.'</p> + +<p>'Off! Where?'</p> + +<p>'I've enlisted.'</p> + +<p>Christina didn't faint. She didn't take out her delicate and daintily +perfumed <i>mouchoir</i>, to hide the tears that were not there. She looked +at him for a moment, while two great <i>real</i> tears rolled down her +cheeks, and then—precipitated all her charms right into his arms. +Hopeful stood it manfully—rather liked it, in fact. But this is a +tableau that we've no right to be looking at; so let us pass by how they +parted—with what tears and embraces, and extravagant protestations of +undying affection, and wild promises of eternal remembrance; there is no +need of telling, for we all know how foolish young people will be under +such circumstances. We older heads know all about such little matters, +and what they amount to. Oh! yes, certainly we do.</p> + +<p>The next morning found Hopeful, with a dozen others, in charge of the +lieutenant, and on their way to join the regiment. Hopeful's first +experience of camp-life was not a singular one. He, like the rest of us, +at first exhibited the most energetic awkwardness in drilling. Like the +rest of us, he had occasional attacks of home-sickness; and as he stood +at his post on picket in the silent night-watches, while the camps lay +quietly sleeping in the moonlight, his thoughts would go back to his +far-away home, and the little shop, and the plentiful charms of the +fair-haired Christina. So he went on, dreaming sweet dreams of home, but +ever active and alert, eager to learn and earnest to do his duty, +silencing all selfish suggestions of his heart with the simple logic of +a pure patriotism.</p> + +<p>'Hopeful,' he would say, 'the Banger's took care o' you all your life, +an' now you're here to take care of it. See that you do it the best you +know how.'</p> + +<p>It would be more thrilling and interesting, and would read better, if we +could take our hero to glory amid the roar of cannon and muskets, +through a storm of shot and shell, over a serried line of glistening +bayonets. But strict truth—a matter of which newspaper correspondents, +and sensational writers, generally seem to have a very misty +conception—forbids it.</p> + +<p>It was only a skirmish—a bush-whacking fight for the possession of a +swamp. A few companies were deployed as skirmishers, to drive out the +rebels.</p> + +<p>'Now, boys,' shouted the captain, 'after'em! Shoot to kill, not to scare +'em!'</p> + +<p>'Ping! ping!' rang the rifles.</p> + +<p>'Z-z-z-z-vit!' sang the bullets.</p> + +<p>On they went, crouching among the bushes, creeping along under the banks +of the brook, cautiously peering from behind trees in search of +'butternuts.'</p> + +<p>Hopeful was in the advance; his hat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> was lost, and his hair more +defiantly bristling than ever. Firmly grasping his rifle, he pushed on, +carefully watching every tree and bush, A rebel sharp-shooter started to +run from one tree to another, when, quick as thought, Hopeful's rifle +was at his shoulder, a puff of blue smoke rose from its mouth, and the +rebel sprang into the air and fell back—dead. Almost at the same +instant, as Hopeful leaned forward to see the effect of his shot, he +felt a sudden shock, a sharp, burning pain, grasped at a bush, reeled, +and sank to the ground.</p> + +<p>'Are you hurt much, Hope?' asked one of his comrades, kneeling beside +him and staunching the blood that flowed from his wounded leg.</p> + +<p>'Yes, I expect I am; but that red wamus over yonder's redder 'n ever +now. That feller won't need a pension.'</p> + +<p>They carried him back to the hospital, and the old surgeon looked at the +wound, shook his head, and briefly made his prognosis.</p> + +<p>'Bone shattered—vessels injured—bad leg—have to come off. Good +constitution, though; he'll stand it.'</p> + +<p>And he did stand it; always cheerful, never complaining, only, +regretting that he must be discharged—that he was no longer able to +serve his country.</p> + +<p>And now Hopeful is again sitting on his little bench in Mynheer +Kordwäner's little shop, pegging away at the coarse boots, singing the +same glorious prophecy that we first heard him singing. He has had but +two troubles since his return. One is the lingering regret and +restlessness that attends a civil life after an experience of the rough, +independent life in camp. The other trouble was when he first saw +Christina after his return. The loving warmth with which she greeted him +pained him; and when the worthy Herr considerately went out of the room, +leaving them alone, he relapsed into gloomy silence. At length, speaking +rapidly, and with choked utterance, he began:</p> + +<p>'Christie, you know I love you now, as I always have, better 'n all the +world. But I'm a cripple now—no account to nobody—just a dead +weight—an' I don't want you, 'cause o' your promise before I went away, +to tie yourself to a load that'll be a drag on you all your life. That +contract—ah—promises—an't—is—is hereby repealed! There!' And he +leaned his head upon his hands and wept bitter tears, wrung by a great +agony from his loving heart.</p> + +<p>Christie gently laid her hand upon his shoulder, and spoke, slowly and +calmly: 'Hopeful, your soul was not in that leg, was it?'</p> + +<p>It would seem as if Hopeful had always thought that such was the case, +and was just receiving new light upon the subject, he started up so +suddenly.</p> + +<p>'By jing! Christie!' And he grasped her hand, and—but that is another +of those scenes that don't concern us at all. And Christie has promised +next Christmas to take the name, as she already has the heart, of +Tackett. Herr Kordwäner, too, has come to the conclusion that he wants a +partner, and on the day of the wedding a new sign is to be put up over a +new and larger shop, on which 'Co.' will mean Hopeful Tackett. In the +mean time, Hopeful hammers away lustily, merrily whistling, and singing +the praises of the 'Banger.' Occasionally, when he is resting, he will +tenderly embrace his stump of a leg, gently patting and stroking it, and +talking to it as to a pet. If a stranger is in the shop, he will hold it +out admiringly, and ask:</p> + +<p>'Do you know what I call that? I call that <i>'Hopeful Tackett—his +mark.'</i>'</p> + +<p>And it is a mark—a mark of distinction—a badge of honor, worn by many +a brave fellow who has gone forth, borne and upheld by a love for the +dear old flag, to fight, to suffer, to die if need be, for it; won in +the fierce contest, amid the clashing strokes of the steel and the wild +whistling of bullets; won by unflinching nerve and unyielding muscle; +worn as a badge of the proudest distinction an American can reach. If +these lines come to one of those that have thus fought and +suffered—though his scars were received in some unnoticed, unpublished +skirmish, though official bulletins<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> spoke not of him, 'though fame +shall never know his story'—let them come as a tribute to him; as a +token that he is not forgotten; that those that have been with him +through the trials and the triumphs of the field, remember him and the +heroic courage that won for him by those honorable scars; and that while +life is left to them they will work and fight in the same cause, +cheerfully making the same sacrifices, seeking no higher reward than to +take him by the hand and call him 'comrade,' and to share with him the +proud consciousness of duty done. Shoulder-straps and stars may bring +renown; but he is no less a real hero who, with rifle and bayonet, +throws himself into the breach, and, uninspired by hope of official +notice, battles manfully for the right.</p> + +<p>Hopeful Tackett, humble yet illustrious, a hero for all time, we salute +you.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="JOHN_BULL_TO_JONATHAN" id="JOHN_BULL_TO_JONATHAN"></a>JOHN BULL TO JONATHAN.</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">You grow too fast, my child! Your stalwart limbs,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Herculean in might, now rival mine;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The starry light upon your forehead dims<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The lustre of my crown—distasteful sign.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Contract thy wishes, boy! Do not insist<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Too much on what's thine own—thou art too new!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bend and curtail thy stature! As I list,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">It is <i>my</i> glorious privilege to do.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Take my advice—I freely give it thee—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Nay, would enforce it. I am ripe in years—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let thy young vigor minister to me!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Restrain thy freedom when it interferes!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No rival must among the nations be<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To jeopardize my own supremacy!<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="JONATHAN_TO_JOHN_BULL" id="JONATHAN_TO_JOHN_BULL"></a>JONATHAN TO JOHN BULL.</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Thanks for your kind advice, my worthy sire!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Though thrust upon me, and but little prized.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The offices you modestly require,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">I reckon, will be scarcely realized.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My service to you! but not quite so far<br /></span> +<span class="i1">That I will lop a limb, or force my lips<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To gratify your longing. Not a star<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Of my escutcheon shall your fogs eclipse!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let noble deeds evince my parentage.<br /></span> +<span class="i1">No rival I; my aim is not so low:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In nature's course, youth soon outstrippeth age,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And is survivor at its overthrow.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Freedom is Heaven's best gift. Thanks! I am free,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor will acknowledge your supremacy!<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span></div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="AMERICAN_STUDENT_LIFE" id="AMERICAN_STUDENT_LIFE"></a>AMERICAN STUDENT LIFE.</h2> + +<h3>SOME MEMORIES OF YALE.</h3> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Through many an hour of summer suns,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">By many pleasant ways,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like Hezekiah's, backward runs<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The shadow of my days.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I kiss the lips I once have kissed;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The gas-light wavers dimmer;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And softly through a vinous mist,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">My college friendships glimmer.'<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">—<i>Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It is now I dare not say how many years since the night that chum and I, +emerging from No. 24, South College, descended the well-worn staircase, +and took our last stroll beneath the heavy shadows that darkly hung from +the old elms of our Alma Mater. Commencement, with its dazzling +excitement, its galleries of fair faces to smile and approve, its +gathered wisdom to listen and adjudge, was no longer the goal of our +student-hopes; and the terrible realization that our joyous college-days +were over, now pressed hard upon us as we paced slowly along, listening +to the low night wind among the summer leaves overhead, or looking up at +the darkened windows whence the laugh and song of class-mates had so oft +resounded to vex with mirth the drowsy ear of night—and tutors. I +thought then, as I have often thought since, that our student-life must +be 'the golden prime' compared with which all coming time would be as +silver, brass, or iron. Here youth with its keenness of enjoyment and +generous heartiness; freedom from care, smooth-browed and mirthful; +liberal studies refining and elevating withal; the Numbers, whose ready +sympathy had divided sorrow and multiplied joy, were associated as they +never could be again; and so I doubt not many a one has felt as he stood +at the door of academic life and looked away over its sunny meadows to +the dark woodlands and rugged hillsides of world-life. How throbbed in +old days the wandering student's heart as on the distant hill-top he +turned to take a last look at disappearing Bologna and remembered the +fair curtain-lecturing Novella de Andrea<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>—fair prototype of modern +Mrs. Caudle; how his spirits rose when, like Lucentio, he came to 'fair +Padua, nursery of arts;' or how he mused for the last time wandering +beside the turbid Arno, in</p> + + +<p class='center'>'Pisa, renowned for grave citizens,'</p> + + +<p>we wot not. Little do we know either of the ancient 'larks' of the +Sorbonne, of Leyden, Utrecht, and Amsterdam; somewhat less, in spite of +gifted imagining, of <i>The Student of Salamanca</i>. But Howitt's <i>Student +Life in Germany</i>, setting forth in all its noisy, smoking, beer-drinking +conviviality the significance of the Burschenleben,</p> + + +<p class='center'>'I am an unmarried scholar and a free man;'</p> + + +<p>Bristed's <i>Five Years in an English University</i>, congenial in its +setting forth of the Cantab's carnal delights and intellectual +jockeyism; <i>The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, an Oxford Freshman</i>, +wherein one 'Cuthbert Bede, B.A.' has by 'numerous illustrations' of +numerous dissipations, given as good an idea as is desirable of the +'rowing men' in that very antediluvian receptacle of elegant +scholarship; are all present evidences of the affectionate interest with +which the graduate reverts to his college days. In like manner <i>Student +Life in Scotland</i> has engaged the late attention of venerable +<i>Blackwood</i>, while the pages of <i>Putnam</i>, in <i>Life in a Canadian +College</i>,<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> and <i>Fireside Travels</i>,<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> have given some idea of things +nearer home, some little time ago. But while numerous pamphlets and +essays have been written on our collegiate systems of education,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> the +general development and present doings of Young America in the +universities remain untouched.</p> + +<p>The academic influences exerted over American students are, it must be +premised, vastly different from those of the old world. Imprimis, our +colleges are just well into being. Reaching back into no dim antiquity, +their rise and progress are traceable from their beginnings—beginnings +not always the greatest. Thus saith the poet doctor of his Alma Mater:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Pray, who was on the Catalogue<br /></span> +<span class="i1">When college was begun?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Two nephews of the President,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And <i>the</i> Professor's son,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">(They turned a little Indian by,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">As brown as any bun;)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lord! how the Seniors knocked about<br /></span> +<span class="i1">That Freshman class of one!'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>From small beginnings and short lives our colleges have gathered neither +that momentum of years heavy with mighty names and weighty memories, nor +of wealth heaping massive piles and drawing within their cloistered +walls the learning of successive centuries which carries the European +universities crashing down the ages, though often heavy laden with the +dead forms of mediæval preciseness. No established church makes with +them common cause, no favoring and influential aristocracy gives them +the careless security of a complete protection. Their development thus +far has been under very different influences. Founded in the wilderness +by our English ancestors, they were, at first, it is true, in their +course of study and in foolish formula of ceremony an imperfect copy of +trans-Atlantic originals. Starting from this point, their course has +been shaped according to the peculiar genius of our institutions and +people. Republican feeling has dispensed with the monastic dress, the +servile demeanor toward superiors, and the ceremonious forms which had +lost their significance. The peculiar wants of a new country have +required not high scholarship, but more practical learning to meet +pressing physical wants. Again, our numerous religious sects requiring +each a nursery of its own children, and the great extent of our country, +have called, or seemed to call (in spite of continually increasing +facility of intercourse) for some one hundred and twenty colleges within +our borders. Add to this a demand not peculiar but general—the +increased claim of the sciences and of modern languages upon our +regard—and the accompanying fallacy of supposing Latin and Greek +heathenish and useless, and we have a summary view of the influences +bearing upon our literary institutions. Hence both good and evil have +arisen. Our colleges easily conforming in their youthful and supple +energy, have met the demands of the age. They have thrown aside their +monastic gowns and quadrangular caps. They have in good degree given up +the pedantic follies of Latin versification and Hebrew orations. Their +walls have arisen alike in populous city and lonely hamlet, and in +poverty and insignificance they have been content could they give depth +and breadth to any small portion of the national mind. They have +conceded to Science the place which her rapid and brilliant progress +demanded. On the other hand, however, we see long and well-proven +systems of education profaned by the ignorant hands of superficial +reformers. We see the colleges themselves dragging on a precarious life, +yet less revered than cherished by fostering sects, and more hooted at +by the advocates of potato-digging and other practical pursuits, than +defended by their legitimate protectors. It is not to be denied that +there is a powerful element of Materialism among us, and that too often +we neither appreciate nor respect the earnest, abstruse scholar. The +progress of humanity must be shouted in popular catch-words from the +house-tops, and the noisy herald appropriates the laudation of him who +in pain and weariness traced the hidden truth. We hear men of enlarged +thought and lofty views derided as old fogies because beyond unassisted +appreciation, until we are half-tempted to believe the generation to be +multiplied Ephraims<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> given to their idols, who had best be let alone.</p> + +<p>The American student, under these influences, differs somewhat from his +European brethren. He is younger by two or three years. Though generally +from the better class, he is more, perhaps, identified with the mass of +the people, and is more of a politician than a scholar. His remarks upon +the Homeric dialects, however laudatory, are most suspiciously vague, +and though he escape such slight errors as describing the Gracchi as a +barbarous tribe in the north of Italy or the Piræus as a meat-market of +Athens, you must beware of his classical allusions. On the other hand he +is more moral, a more independent thinker and a freer man than his +prototype across the sea. His fault is, as Bristed says, that he is +superficial; his virtue, that he is straightforward and earnest in +aiming at practical life.</p> + +<p>Such may suffice for a few general remarks. But some memories of one of +our most important universities will better set forth the habits and +customs of the joyous student-life than farther wearisome generality.</p> + +<p>The pleasant days are gone that I dreamed away beneath the green arcades +of the fair Elm City. But still come the budding spring and the blooming +summer to embower those quiet streets and to fill the morning hour with +birds' sweet singing. Still comes the gorgeous autumn—the dead summer +lain in state—and the cloud-robed winter to round the circling year. +Still streams the golden sunlight through the green canopies of tented +elms, and still, I ween, do pretty school-girls (feminine of student) +loiter away in flirting fascination the holiday afternoons beneath their +shade. Still do our memories haunt those old walks we loved so well: the +avenue shaded and silent like grove of Academe, fit residence of +colloquial man of science or genial metaphysician; the old cemetery with +its brown ivy-grown wall, its dark, massive evergreens, and moss-grown +stones, that, before years had effaced the inscription, told the mortal +story of early settler; elm-arched Temple street, where the midnight +moon shone so softly through the dark masses of foliage and slept so +sweetly on the sloping green. Still do those old wharves and +warehouses—ancient haunts of colonial commerce and scenes of +continental struggle—rest there in dusty quiet, hearing but murmurs of +the noisy merchant-world without; and the fair bay lies silent among +those green hills that slope southward to the Sound. Methinks I hear the +ripple of its moonlit waves as in the summer night it upbore our gallant +boat and its fair freight; the far-off music stealing o'er the bright +waters; the distant rattling of some paid-out cable as a newly arrived +bark anchors down the bay; or the lonely baying of a watch-dog at some +farm-house on the hight. I see the sail-boats bending under their canvas +and dashing the salt spray from their bows as they rush through the +smooth water, and the oyster-boats cleaving the clear brine like an +arrow, bound for Fair Haven, of many shell-fish; while sturdy sloops and +schooners—suggestive of lobsters or pineapples—bow their big heads +meekly and sway themselves at rest. I see again those long lines of +green-wooded slope, here crowned by a lonely farm-house musing solitary +on the hills as it looks off on the blue Sound, there ending abruptly in +a weather-worn cliff of splintered trap, or anon bringing down some +arable acres to the very beach, where a gray old cottage, kept in +countenance by two or three rugged poplars, like the fisher's hut,</p> + + +<p class='center'>'In der blauen Fluth sich beschaut.'</p> + + +<p>Nor can I soon forget those wild hillsides, so glorious both when the +summer floods of foliage came pouring down their sides, and when autumn, +favorite child of the year, donned his coat of many colors and came +forth to join his brethren. Then, on holiday-afternoon, free from +student-care, we climbed the East or West Rock, and looked abroad over +the distant city-spires, rock-ribbed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> hillside and sail-dotted sea; or +threading the devious path to the Judges' Cave, where tradition said +that in colonial times the regicides, Goffe and Whalley, lay hidden, +read on the lone rock that in the winter wilderness overhung their bleak +hiding-place, in an old inscription carved not without pain, in quaint +letters of other years, the stern and stirring old watchword:</p> + + +<h4>'RESISTANCE TO TYRANTS IS OBEDIENCE TO GOD.'</h4> + + +<p>Or, going further, we climbed Mount Carmel, and looked from its steep +cliff down into the solitary rock-strewn valley—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Where storm and lightning from that huge gray wall,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Had tumbled down vast blocks, and at the base<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dashed them in fragments.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Or went on to the Cheshire hillside, where the Roaring Brook, tumbling +down the steep ravine, flashed its clear waters into whitest foam, and +veiled the unsightly rocks with its snowy spray; or, perchance, in +cumbrous boat, floated upon Lake Saltonstall, hermit of ponds, set like +a liquid crystal in the emerald hills—an eyesore to luckless piscatory +students, but highly favored of all lovers of ice, whether applied to +the bottoms of ringing High Dutchers, or internally in shape of summer +refrigerators.</p> + +<p>In the midst of these pleasant haunts and this fair city, lies a sloping +green of twenty or twenty-five acres, girt and bisected by rows of huge +elms, and planted with three churches, whose spires glisten above the +tall trees, and with a stuccoed State House, whose peeled columns and +crumbling steps are more beautiful in conception than execution. On the +upper side, looking down across, stretched out in a long line of eight +hundred feet, the buildings of the college stand, in dense shade. Ugly +barracks, four stories high, built of red brick, without a line of +beautifying architecture, they yet have an ancient air of repose, buried +there in the deep shade, that pleases even the fastidious eye. In the +rear, an old laboratory, diverted from its original gastronomic purpose +of hall, which in our American colleges has dispensed with commons, a +cabinet, similarly metamorphosed, and containing some magnificent +specimens of the New World's minerals; a gallery of portraits of +college, colonial and revolutionary worthies—a collection of rare +historical interest; a Gothic pile of library, built of brown sandstone, +its slender towers crowned with grinning, uncouth heads, cut in stone, +which are pointed out to incipient Freshmen as busts of members of the +college faculty; and a castellated Gothic structure of like material, +occupied by the two ancient literary fraternities, and notable toward +the close of the academic year as the place where isolated Sophomores +and Seniors write down the results of two years' study in the Biennial +Examination—make up the incongruous whole of the college proper.</p> + +<p>Such is the place where, about the middle of September, if you have been +sojourning through the very quiet vacation in one of the almost deserted +hotels of New-Haven, you will begin to be conscious of an awakening from +the six weeks' torpor, (the <i>long</i> vacation of hurried Americans who +must study forty weeks of the year.) Along the extended row of brick you +will begin to discern aproned 'sweeps' clearing the month and a half's +accumulated rubbish from the walks, beating carpets on the grass-plots, +re-lining with new fire-brick the sheet-iron cylinder-stoves, more +famous for their eminent Professor improver (may his shadow never be +less!) than for their heating qualities, or furbishing old furniture +purchased at incredibly low prices, of the last class, to make good as +new for the Freshmen, periphrastically known as 'the young gentlemen who +have lately entered college.' It may be, too, that your practiced eye +will detect one of these fearful youths, who, coming from a thousand +miles in the interior—from the prairies of the West or the bayous of +the South—has arrived before his time, and now, blushing unseen, is +reconnoitering the intellectual fortress which he hopes soon to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> storm +with 'small Latin and less Greek,' or, perchance, remembering with sad +face the distance of his old home and the strangeness of the new. A few +days more, and hackmen drive down Chapel street hopefully, and return +with trunks and carpet-bags outside and diversified specimens of +student-humanity within—a Freshman, in spite of his efforts, showing +that his as yet undeveloped character is '<i>summâ integritate et +innocentiâ</i>;' a Sophomore, somewhat flashy and bad-hatted, a <i>hard</i> +student in the worse sense, with much of the '<i>fortiter in re</i>' in his +bearing; a Junior, exhibiting the antithetical '<i>suaviter in modo</i>;' a +Senior, whose '<i>otium cum dignitate</i>' at once distinguishes him from the +vulgar herd of common mortals. Then succeed hearty greetings of meeting +friends, great purchase of text-books, and much changing of rooms; +students being migratory by nature, and stimulated thereto by the +prospect of choice of better rooms conceded to advanced academical +standing. In which state of things the various employés of college, +including the trusty colored Aquarius, facetiously denominated Professor +<i>Paley</i>, under the excitement of numerous quarters, greatly multiply +their efforts.</p> + +<p>But the chief interest of the opening year is clustered around the class +about to unite its destinies with the college-world. A new century of +students—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'The igneous men of Georgia,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The ligneous men of Maine,'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>the rough, energetic Westerner, the refined, lethargic metropolitan, +with here and there a missionary's son from the Golden Horn or the isles +of the Pacific or even a Chinese, long-queued and meta-physical, are to +be divided between the two rival literary Societies.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> These having +during the last term with great excitement elected their officers for +the coming 'campaign,' and held numerous 'indignation meetings,' where +hostile speeches and inquiries into the numbers to be sent down by the +various academies were diligently prosecuted to the great neglect of +debates and essays, now join issue with an adroitness on the part of +their respective members which gives great promise for political life. +Committees at the station-house await the arrival of every train, accost +every individual of right age and verdancy; and, having ascertained that +he is not a city clerk nor a graduate, relapsed into his ante-academic +state, offer their services as amateur porters, guides, or tutors, +according to the wants of the individual. Having thus ingratiated +themselves, various are the ways of procedure. Should the new-comer +prove confiding, perhaps he is told that 'there is <i>one</i> vacancy left in +our Society, and if you wish, I will try and get it for you,' which, +after a short absence, presumed to be occupied with strenuous effort, +the amiable advocate succeeds in doing, to the great gratitude of his +Freshman friend. But should he prove less tractable, and wish to hear +both sides, then some comrade is perhaps introduced as belonging to the +other Society, and is sorely worsted in a discussion of the respective +excellencies of the two rival fraternities. Or if he be religious, the +same disguised comrade shall visit him on the Sabbath, and with much +profanity urge the claims of his supposititious Society. By such, and +more honorable means, the destiny of each is soon fixed, and only a few +stragglers await undecided the so-called 'Statement of Facts,' when with +infinite laughter and great hustling of 'force committees,' they are +preädmitted to 'Brewster's Hall' to hear the three appointed orators of +each Society laud themselves and deny all virtue to their opponents; +which done, in chaotic state of mind they fall an easy prey to the +strongest, and with the rest are initiated that very evening with lusty +cheers and noisy songs and speeches protracted far into the night.</p> + +<p>Nor less notable are the Secret Societies, two or three of which exist +in every class, and are handed down yearly to the care of successors. +With more quiet, but with busy effort, their mem<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>bers are carefully +chosen and pledged, and with phosphorous, coffins, and dead men's bones, +are awfully admitted to the mysteries of Greek initials, private +literature, and secret conviviality. Being picked men, and united, they +each form an <i>imperium in imperio</i> in the large societies much used by +ambitious collegians. Curious as it may seem, too, many of these +societies have gained some influence and notoriety beyond college walls. +The Psi Upsilon, Alpha Delta Phi, and Delta Kappa Epsilon Societies, are +now each ramified through a dozen or more colleges, having annual +conventions, attended by numerous delegates from the several chapters, +and by graduate members of high standing in every department of letters. +Yet they have no deep significance like that of the Burschenschaft.</p> + +<p>Close treading on the heels of Society movements, comes the annual +foot-ball game between the Freshmen and Sophomores. The former having +<i>ad mores majorum</i> given the challenge and received its acceptance, on +some sunny autumn afternoon you may see the rival classes of perhaps a +hundred men each, drawn up on the Green in battle and motley array, the +latter consisting of shirt and pants, unsalable even to the sons of +Israel, and huge boots, perhaps stuffed with paper to prevent hapless +abrasion of shins. The steps of the State House are crowded with the +'upper classes,' and ladies are numerous in the balconies of the +New-Haven Hotel. The umpires come forward, and the ground is cleared of +intruders. There is a dead silence as an active Freshman, retiring to +gain an impetus, rushes on; a general rush as the ball is <i>warned</i>; then +a seizure of the disputed bladder, and futile endeavors to give it +another impetus, ending in stout grappling and the endeavor to force it +through. Now there is fierce issue; neither party gives an inch. Now +there is a side movement and roll of the struggling orb as to relieve +the pressure. Now one party gives a little, then closes desperately in +again on the encouraged enemy. Now a dozen are down in a heap, and there +is momentary cessation, then up and pressing on again. Here a fiery +spirit grows pugnacious, but is restrained by his class-mates; there +another has his shirt torn off him, and presents the picturesque +appearance of an amateur scarecrow. There are, in short, both</p> + + +<p class='center'>'Breaches of peace and pieces of breeches,'</p> + + +<p>until the stronger party carries the ball over the bounds, or it gets +without the crowd unobserved by most, and goes off hurriedly under the +direction of some swift-footed player to the same goal. Then mighty is +the cheering of the victors, and woe-begone the looks, though defiant +the groans of the vanquished. And thus, with much noise and dispute, and +great confounding of umpire, they continue for three, four, or five +games, or until the evening chapel-bell calls to prayers. In the evening +the victors sing pæans of victory by torch-light on the State House +steps, and bouquets, supposed to be sent by the fair ones of the +balconies, are presented and received with great glorification.</p> + +<p>Nor less exciting and interesting in college annals, is the Burial of +Euclid. The incipient Sophomores, assisted by the other classes, must +perform duly the funeral rites of their friend of Freshman-days, by +nocturnal services at the 'Temple.' Wherefore, toward midnight of some +dark Wednesday evening in October, you may see masked and +fantastically-dressed students by twos and threes stealing through the +darkness to the common rendezvous. An Indian chief of gray leggins and +grave demeanor goes down arm in arm with the prince of darkness, and a +portly squire of the old English school communes sociably with a +patriotic continental. Here is a reïnforcement of 'Labs,' (students of +chemistry,) noisy with numerous fish-horns; there a detachment of +'Medics,' appropriately armed with thigh-bones, according to their +several resources. Then, when gathered within the hall, a crowded mass +of ugly masks, shocking bad hats, and antique attire, look down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> from +the steep slope of seats upon the stage where lies the effigy of Father +Euclid, in inflammable state. After a voluntary by the 'Blow Hards,' +'Horne Blenders,' or whatever facetiously denominated band performs the +music, there is a mighty singing of some Latin song, written with more +reference to the occasion than to correct quantities, of which the +following opening stanza may serve as a specimen:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Fundite nunc lacrymas,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Plorate Yalenses:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Euclid rapuerunt fata,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Membra et ejus inhumata<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Linquimus tres menses.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The wild, grotesque hilarity of those midnight songs can never be +forgotten. Then come poem and funeral oration, interspersed with songs, +and music by the band—'Old Grimes is dead,' 'Music from the Spheres,' +and other equally solemn and rare productions. Then are torches lighted, +and two by two the long train of torch-bearers defiles through the +silent midnight streets to the sound of solemn music, and passing by the +dark cemetery of the real dead, bear through 'Tutor's Lane' the coffin +of their mathematical ancestor. They climb the hill beyond, and commit +him to the flames, invoking Pluto, in Latin prayer, and chanting a final +dirge, while the flare of torches, the fearful grotesqueness of each +uncouth disguised wight, and the dark background of the encircling +forest, make the wild mirth almost solemn.</p> + +<p>So ends the fun of the closing year; and with the exception of the +various excitements of burlesque debate on Thanksgiving eve, when the +smallest Freshman in either Society is elected President <i>pro tempore;</i> +of the <i>noctes ambrosianæ</i> of the secret societies; of appointments, +prize essays, and the periodical issue of the <i>Yale Literary</i>, now a +venerable periodical of twenty years' standing; the severe drill of +college study finds little relaxation during the winter months. Three +recitations or lectures each day, a review each day of the last lesson, +review of and examination on each term's study, with two biennial +examinations during the four years' course, require great diligence to +excel, and considerable industry to keep above water. But with the +returning spring the unused walks again are paced, and the dry keels +launched into the vernal waters. Again, in the warm twilight of evening, +you hear the laugh and song go up under the wide-spreading elms. Now, +too, comes the Exhibition of the Wooden Spoon, where the low-appointment +men burlesque the staid performances of college, and present the lowest +scholar on the appointment-list with an immense spoon, handsomely carved +from rosewood, and engraved with the convivial motto: '<i>Dum vivimus +vivamus</i>.'</p> + +<p>Then, too, come those summer days upon the harbor, when the fleet +club-boats, and their stalwart crews, like those of Alcinous,</p> + + +<p class='center'>'κοὑροι ἁναρρἱπτειν αλα πηδὡ,'</p> + + +<p>in their showy uniforms, push out from Ryker's; some bound upward past +the oyster-beds of Fair Haven, away up among the salt-marsh meadows, +where the Quinnipiac wanders under quaint old bridges among fair, green +hills; some for the Light, shooting out into the broad waters of the +open bay, their feathered oars flashing in the sunlight; some for +Savin's Rock, where among the cool cedars that overshadow the steep +rock, they sing uproarious student-songs until the dreamy beauty of +ocean, with its laughing sunlight, its white sails, and green, quiet +shores, like visible music, shall steal in and fill the soul until the +noisy hilarity becomes eloquent silence. And now, as in the +twilight-hour they are again afloat, you may hear the song again:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Many the mile we row, boys,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Merry, merry the song;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The joys of long ago, boys,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Shall be remembered long.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then as we rest upon the oar,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">We raise the cheerful strain,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which we have often sung before,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And gladly sing again.'<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></div></div> + +<p>But perhaps the most interesting day of college-life is +'Presentation-Day,' when the Seniors, having passed the various ordeals +of <i>viva voce</i> and written examinations, are presented by the senior +tutor to the President, as worthy of their degrees. This ceremony is +succeeded by a farewell poem and oration by two of the class chosen for +the purpose, after which they partake of a collation with the college +faculty, and then gather under the elms in front of the colleges. They +seat themselves on a ring of benches, inside of which are placed huge +tubs of lemonade, (the strongest drink provided for public occasions,) +long clay pipes, and great store of mildest Turkey tobacco. Here, led on +by an amateur band of fiddlers, flutists, etc., through the long +afternoon of 'the leafy month of June,' surrounded by the other classes +who crowd about in cordial sympathy, they smoke manfully, harangue +enthusiastically, laugh uproariously, and sing lustily, beginning always +with the glorious old Burschen song of 'Gaudeamus':</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Gaudeamus igitur<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Juvenes dum sumus:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Post jucundam juventutem,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Post molestam senectutem,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nos habebit humus.'<br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 45%; Margin-left: 2em; Margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;" /> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Pereat tristitia,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pereant osores,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pereat diabolus,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Quivis antiburschius<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Atque irrisores.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Then as the shadows grow long, perhaps they sing again those stirring +words which one returning to the third semi-centennial of his Alma +Mater, wrote with all the warmth and power of manly affection:</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Count not the tears of the long-gone years,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">With their moments of pain and sorrow;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But laugh in the light of their memories bright,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And treasure them all for the morrow.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then roll the song in waves along,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">While the hours are bright before us,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And grand and hale are the towers of Yale,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Like guardians towering o'er us.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr style="width: 45%; Margin-left: 2em; Margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;" /> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Clasp ye the hand 'neath the arches grand<br /></span> +<span class="i1">That with garlands span our greeting.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With a silent prayer that an hour as fair<br /></span> +<span class="i1">May smile on each after meeting:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And long may the song, the joyous song,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Roll on in the hours before us,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And grand and hale may the elms of Yale<br /></span> +<span class="i1">For many a year bend o'er us.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Then standing in closer circle, they pass around to give, each to each, +a farewell grasp of the hand; and amid that extravagant merriment the +lips begin to quiver, and eyes grow dim. Then, two by two, preceded by +the miscellaneous band, playing 'The Road to Boston,' and headed by a +huge base-viol, borne by two stout fellows, and played by a third, they +pass through each hall of the long line of buildings, giving farewell +cheers, and at the foot of one of the tall towers, each throws his +handful of earth on the roots of an ivy, which, clinging about those +brown masses of stone, in days to come, he trusts will be typical of +their mutual, remembrance as he breathes the silent prayer: 'Lord, keep +our memories green!'</p> + +<p>So end the college-days of these most uproarious of mirth-makers and +hardest of American students; and the hundred whose joys and sorrows +have been identified through four happy years, are dispersed over the +land. They are partially gathered again at Commencement, but the broken +band is never completely united. On the third anniversary of their +graduation, the first class-meeting takes place; and the first happy +father is presented with a silver cup, suitably inscribed. On the tenth, +twentieth, and other decennial years, the gradually diminishing band, in +smaller and smaller numbers, meet about the beloved shrine, until only +two or three gray-haired men clasp the once stout hand and renew the +remembrance of 'the days that are gone.'</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'They come ere life departs,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Ere winged death appears.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To throng their joyous hearts<br /></span> +<span class="i1">With dreams of sunnier years:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To meet once more<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Where pleasures sprang,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And arches rang<br /></span> +<span class="i4">With songs of yore.'<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></div></div> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> 'In the fourteenth century, Novella de Andrea, daughter of +the celebrated canonist, frequently occupied her father's chair; and her +beauty was so striking, that a curtain was drawn before her in order not +to distract the attention of the students.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Vol. i. p. 392.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Vol. iii. pp. 379 and 473.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> The Linonian Society was founded in 1753; The Brothers in +Unity, fifteen years later, in 1768.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="GO_IN_AND_WIN" id="GO_IN_AND_WIN"></a>GO IN AND WIN.</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">Will nothing rouse the Northmen<br /></span> +<span class="i8">To see what they can do?<br /></span> +<span class="i6">When in one day of our war-growth<br /></span> +<span class="i8">The South are growing two?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When they win a victory it always counts a pair,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One at home in Dixie, and another <i>over there</i>!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">North, you have spent your millions!<br /></span> +<span class="i8">North, you have sent your men!<br /></span> +<span class="i6">But if the war ask billions,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">You must give it all again.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Don't stop to think of what you've done—it's very fine and true—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But in fighting for our <i>life</i>, the thing is, <i>what we've yet to do</i>.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">Who dares to talk of party,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">And the coming President,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">When the rebels threaten 'bolder raids,'<br /></span> +<span class="i8">And all the land is rent?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How <i>dare</i> we learn 'they gather strength,' by every telegraph,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If an army of a million could have scattered them like chaff!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">What means it when the people<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Are prompt with blood and gold,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">That this devil-born rebellion<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Is growing two years old?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Nigger feeds them as of old, and keeps away their fears,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While 'gayly into battle' go the 'Southern cavaliers.'<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">And the Richmond <i>Whig</i>, which lately<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Lay groveling in mud,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Shows its mulatto insolence,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">And prates of 'better blood:'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'We ruled them in the Union; we can thrash them out of bounds:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ye are mad, ye drunken Helots—cap off, ye Yankee hounds!'<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">Yet the Northman has the power,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">And the North would not be still!<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Rise up! rise up, ye rulers!<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Send the people where ye will!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Don't organize your victories—fly to battle with your bands—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If you can find the brains to lead, <i>we'll find the willing hands!</i><br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="JOHN_NEAL" id="JOHN_NEAL"></a>JOHN NEAL.</h2> + + +<p>John Neal was born at the close of the last century, in Portland, Maine, +where he now resides; and during sixty years it has not been decided +whether he or his twin sister was the elder.</p> + +<p>He was born in 1793. When he was four weeks old, he was fatherless. His +school education began early, as his mother was a celebrated teacher. +From his mother's school he went to the town school, where he once +declared in our hearing that he 'got licked, frozen, and stupefied.' +That he had a rough time, may be inferred from the fact that his parents +were Quakers, and he, notwithstanding his peaceful birthright, <i>fought</i> +his way through the school as 'Quaker Neal.' He went barefoot in those +days through a great deal of trouble. Somewhere in his early life, he +went to a Quaker boarding-school at Windham, where he always averred +that they starved him through two winters, till it was a luxury to get a +mouthful of brown bread that was not a crumb or fragment that some one +had left. At this school the boys learned to sympathize in advance with +Oliver Twist—to eat trash, till they would quarrel for a bit of salt +fish-skin, and to generalize in their hate of Friends from very narrow +data. We have heard Neal speak of the two winters he spent in that +school as by far the most miserable six or eight months of his whole +life.</p> + +<p>Very early, we think at the age of twelve years, he was imprisoned +behind a counter, and continued there till he was near twenty; and by +the time he was twenty one, he had worked his way to a retail shop of +his own in Court street, Boston. We next track him to Baltimore, where, +in 1815, if we are not out in our chronology, John Pierpont, John Neal, +and Joseph L. Lord were in partnership in a wholesale trade. Neal's +somersets in business—from partnership to wholesale jobbing, which he +went into on his own hook with a capital of <i>one hundred and fifty +dollars</i>, and as he once said, in speaking of this remarkable business +operation, 'with about as much credit as a lamp-lighter'—may not be any +more interesting to the public than they were to him then; so we shall +not be particular about them in this chapter of chronicles.</p> + +<p>At Baltimore he was very successful, after he got at it, in making +money, but failed after the peace in 1816. This failure made him a +lawyer. With his characteristic impetuosity, he renounced and denounced +trade, determined to study law, and beat the profession with its own +weapons.</p> + +<p>This impulse drove him at rather more than railroad speed. He studied as +if a demon chased him. By computation of then Justice Story, he +accomplished fourteen years' hard work in four. During this time he was +reading largely in half-a-dozen languages that he knew nothing of when +he began, <i>and maintaining himself</i> by writing, either as editor of <i>The +Telegraph</i>, coëditor of <i>The Portico</i>, (for which he wrote near a volume +octavo in a year or two,) and also as joint-editor of Paul Allen's +<i>Revolution</i>, besides a tremendous avalanche of novels and poetry. We +have amused ourself casting up the amount of this four years' labor. It +seems entirely too large for the calibre of common belief, and we +suppose Neal will hardly believe us, especially if he have grown +luxurious and lazy in these latter days. Crowded into these four years, +we find: for the <i>Portico</i> and <i>Telegraph</i>, and half-a-dozen other +papers, ten volumes; 'Keep Cool,' two volumes; 'Seventy-Six,' two +volumes; 'Errata,' two volumes; 'Niagara and Goldau,' two volumes; Index +to Niles' Register, three volumes; 'Otho,' one volume; 'Logan,' four +volumes; 'Randolph,' two volumes; Buckingham's Galaxy, Miscellanies, and +Poetry, two volumes; making the incredible quantity of thirty volumes. +He could no more have gone leisurely and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> carefully through this amount +of work, than a skater could walk a mile a minute on his skates. The +marvel is, that he got through it on any terms, not that he won his own +disrespect forever. We do not wonder that he manufactured more bayonets +than bee-stings for his literary armory, but we wonder that he became a +literary champion at all. With all the irons Neal had in the fire, we +are not to expect Addisonian paragraphs; and yet he has in his lifetime +been mistaken for Washington Irving, as we can show by an extract from +an old letter of his, which we will give by and by.</p> + +<p>A power that could produce what Neal produced between 1819 and 1823, +properly disciplined and economized, might have performed tasks +analogous to those of the lightning, since it has been put in harness +and employed to carry the mail. When genius has its day of humiliation +for the wasted water of life, Neal may put on sackcloth, for he never +economized his power; but for the soul's fire quenched in idleness, or +smothered in worldliness, certainly for these years, he need wear no +weeds.</p> + +<p>His novels are always like a rushing torrent, never like a calm stream. +They all are dignified with a purpose, with a determination to correct +some error, to remedy some abuse, to do good in any number of instances. +They are not unlike a field of teasels in blossom—there are the thorny +points of this strange plant, and the delicate and exceedingly beautiful +blossom beside, resting on the very points of a hundred lances, with +their lovely lilac bloom. Those who have lived where teasels grow will +understand this illustration. We doubt not it will seem very pointed and +proper to Neal. It must be remembered that the teasel is a very useful +article in dressing cloth, immense cards of them being set in machinery +and made to pass over the cloth and raise and clean the nap. A criticism +taking in all the good and bad points of these novels, would be too +extensive to pass the door of any review or magazine, unless in an +extra. They are full of the faults and virtues of their author's +unformed character. Rich as a California mine, we only wish they could +be passed through a gold-washer, and the genuine yield be thrown again +into our literary currency.</p> + +<p>The character of his poems is indicated by their titles, 'Niagara' and +'Goldau,' and by the <i>nom de plume</i> he thought proper to publish them +under, namely, 'Jehu O. Cataract.' But portions of his poetry repudiate +this thunderous parentage, and are soft as the whispering zephyr or the +cooing of doves. The gentleness of strength has a double beauty: its +own, and that of contrast. Still, the predominating character of Neal's +poetry is the sweep of the wild eagle's wing and the roar of rushing +waters.</p> + +<p>We read his 'Otho' years since, when we were younger than now, and our +pulse beat stronger; and we read it 'holding our breath to the end'—or +this was the exact sensation we felt, as nearly as we can remember, +twelve years ago.</p> + +<p>The character of Neal's periodical writing was just suited to a working +country, that was in too great a hurry to dine decently. People wanted +to be arrested. If they could stop, they had brains enough to judge you +and your wares; but they needed to be lassoed first, and lashed into +quietness afterward, and then they would hear and revere the man who had +been 'smart' enough to conquer them. John Neal seemed to be conscious of +this without knowing it. A veritable woman in his intuitions, he spoke +from them, and the heart of the people responded. The term 'live Yankee' +was of his coinage, and it aptly christened himself.</p> + +<p>Neal went to Europe in 1823, and remained three years. That an American +could manage to maintain himself in England by writing, which Neal did, +is a pregnant fact. But his power is better proved than in this way. He +left America with a vow of temperance during his travels; he returned +with it unbroken. Honor to the strong man!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> He had traveled through +England and France, merely wetting his lips with wine. He wrote volumes +for British periodicals, and also his 'Brother Jonathan' in three +volumes. After looking over the catalogue of his labors for an hour, we +always want to draw a long breath and rest. There is no doubt that since +his return from Europe in 1826, he has written and published, in books +and newspapers, what would make at least one hundred volumes duodecimo. +It would be a hard fate for such an author to be condemned to read his +own productions, for he would never get time to read any thing else.</p> + +<p>Neal's peculiar style caused many oddities and extravagances to be laid +at his door that did not belong there. From this fact of style, people +thought he could not disguise himself on paper. This is a mistake, for +his papers in Miller's <i>European Magazine</i> were attributed to Washington +Irving. We transcribe the paragraph of a letter from Neal, promised +above, and which we received years since:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>'The papers I wrote for Miller's <i>European Magazine</i> have been +generally attributed to no less a person than Washington Irving—a +man whom I resemble just about as much in my person as in my +writing. He, Addisonian and Goldsmithian to the back-bone, and +steeped to the very lips in what is called classical literature, of +which I have a horror and a loathing, as the deadest of all dead +languages; he, foil of subdued pleasantry, quiet humor, and genial +blandness, upon all subjects. I, altogether—but never mind. He is +a generous fellow, and led the way to all our triumphs in that +'field of the cloth of gold' which men call the <i>literary</i>'.</p></div> + +<p>Neal went to England a sort of Yankee knight-errant to fight for his +country. He had the wisdom to fight with his visor down, and quarter on +the enemy. He took heavy tribute from <i>Blackwood</i> and others for his +articles vindicating America, which came to be extravagantly quoted and +read. His article for <i>Blackwood</i> on the Five Presidents and the Five +Candidates, portraying General Jackson to the life as he afterward +proved to be, was translated into most of the European languages. I +transcribe another paragraph from an old letter. It is too +characteristic to remain unread by the public:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>'For my paper on the Presidents, <i>Blackwood</i> sent me five guineas, +and engaged me as a regular contributor, which I determined to be. +But I ventured to write for other journals without consulting him; +whereat he grew tetchy and impertinent, and I blew him up sky-high, +recalled an article in type for which he had paid me <i>fifteen</i> +guineas, (I wish he had kept it,) refunded the money, (I wish I +hadn't,) and left him forever. But this I will say: <i>Blackwood</i> +behaved handsomely to me from first to last, with one small +exception, and showed more courage and good feeling toward '<i>my +beloved</i> country' while I was at the helm of that department, than +any and all the editors, publishers, and proprietors in Britain. +Give the devil his due, I say!'</p></div> + +<p>This escapade with <i>Blackwood</i> might have been a national loss; but +happily, Neal had accomplished his purpose—vindicated his country by +telling the truth, and by showing in himself the metal of one of her +sons. He had silenced the whole British battery of periodicals who had +been abusing America. He had forced literary England to a capitulation, +and he could well enough afford to leave his fifteen guineas at +<i>Blackwood's</i>, and go to France for recreation, as he did about this +time.</p> + +<p>In 1826 he returned to America, and applied for admission to the +New-York bar. This started a hornet's nest. He had been 'sarving up' too +many newspaper and other scribblers, to be left in peace any longer. +With an excellent opinion of himself, his contempt was often quite as +large, to say the least of it, as his charity; and he had doubtless, at +times, in England, ridiculed his countrymen to the full of their +deserving; knowing that if he admitted the debtor side honestly, he +would be allowed to fix the amount of credit without controversy. His +Yankees are alarming specimens, which a growing civilization has so +nearly 'used up' that they are now regarded somewhat like fossil remains +of some extinct species of animal.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p> + +<p>About the time Neal applied for admission to the New-York bar, a portion +of the people of Portland, stimulated by the aggrieved <i>literati</i> above +mentioned, determined to elevate themselves into a mob <i>pro tem.</i>, and +expel him from Portland. In the true spirit of his Quaker ancestry, who, +some one has said, always decided they were needed where they were not +wanted, Neal determined to stay in Portland, The mobocrats declared that +he was sold to the British. Neal retorted, in cool irony, that 'he only +wished he had got an offer.' They asserted that he was the mortal enemy +of our peculiar institutions, and that therefore he must be placarded +and mobbed. Hand-bills were issued, and widely circulated. But they did +not effect their object. They only drove this son of the Quakers to +<i>swear</i> that he would stay in Portland. And he did stay, and established +a literary paper, though he once said to us that 'he would as soon have +thought of setting up a <i>Daily Advertiser</i> in the Isle of Shoals three +months before.'</p> + +<p>His marriage took place about this time, and was, as he used to say, his +pledge for good behavior. His wife was one of the loveliest of +New-England's daughters, and looked as if she might tame a tiger by the +simple magic of her presence. It is several years since we have met +Neal, and near a dozen since we saw him in his home. At that time he +must have been greatly in fault not to be a proud and happy man. If a +calm, restful exterior, and a fresh and youthful beauty, are signs of +happiness, then Mrs. Neal was one of the happiest women in the world. +The delicate softness, the perfection of youth in her beauty, lives +still in our memory. It is one of those real charms that never drop +through the mind's meshes.</p> + +<p>Judging from Neal's impulsive nature, he was not the last man to do +something to be sorry for; but his wife and children looked as if they +were never sorry. We remember a little girl of some five or six years; +we believe they called her Maggie. Her dimpled cheek, her white round +neck and arms, and the perfect symmetry of her form, and the grace of +her motions, have haunted us these twelve years. We would not promise to +remember her as long or as well if we should see her again in these +days. But we made up our mind then, that we would rather be the father +of that child than the author of all Neal had written, or might have +written, even though he had been a wise and prudent man, and had done +his work as well as he doubtless wishes now that he had done it. Neal is +only half himself away from his beautiful home. There, he is in +place—an eagle in a nest lined with down, soft as eider. There his fine +taste is manifest in every thing. If we judge of his taste by his +rapidly-written works, we are sure to do him injustice. We find in him a +union of the most opposite qualities. We can not say a harmonious union. +An inflexible industry is not often united with a bird-like celerity and +grace of movement. With Neal, the two first have always been +combined—the whole on occasions, which might have been multiplied into +unbroken continuity if he had possessed the calm greatness that never +hastens and never rests. He did not rest; but through the first half of +his life, he surely forgot the Scripture which saith: 'He that believeth +shall not make haste.' It has often been asserted, that power which has +rest is greater than a turbulent power. We shall not attempt to settle +whether Erie or Niagara is greater, but we should certainly choose the +Lake for purposes of navigation.</p> + +<p>Many men are careless of their character in private, but sufficiently +careful in public. The reverse is true of Neal. He has never hesitated +to throw his gauntlet in the face of the public as he threw his letters +of introduction in the fire when he arrived in Europe. But when he comes +into the charmed circle of his home, he is neither reckless nor +pugilistic, but a downright gentleman. We don't mean to say that Neal +never gets in a passion in private, or that he never needed the +wholesome restraint of a strait-waistcoat in the disputes of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> Portland +Lyceum or debating-club. We do not give illustrative anecdotes, because +a lively imagination can conceive them, and probably has manufactured +several that have been afloat; still, we dare guess that the subject has +sometimes given facts to base the fictions on.</p> + +<p>We speak of the past. A man with a forty-wildcat power imprisoned in him +is not very likely to travel on from youth to age, keeping the peace on +all occasions. Years bring a calming wisdom. The same man who once swore +five consecutive minutes, because he was forbidden by his landlady to +swear on penalty of leaving her house, and then made all the inmates +vote to refrain from profane language, and rigidly enforced the rule +thus <i>democratically</i> established, is now, after a lapse of more than +thirty years, (particularly provoking impulse aside,) a careful and +dignified gentleman, who might be a Judge, if the public so willed.</p> + +<p>That a long line of intellectual and finely developed ancestry gives a +man a better patent of nobility than all the kings of all countries +could confer, is beginning to be understood and believed among us; +though the old battle against titles and privilege, and the hereditary +descent of both, for a time blinded Americans to the true philosophy of +noble birth.</p> + +<p>Neal's ancestors came originally from Scotland, and exemplify the +proverb that 'bluid is thicker than water,' in more ways than one. They +have a strong feeling of clanship, or, in other words, they are +convinced that it is an honor to be a Neal, and many of the last +generation have given proof positive that their belief is a fact. The +present generation we have little knowledge of, and do not know whether +they fulfill the promise of the name.</p> + +<p>Neal has done good service to the Democracy of our country in many ways, +besides being one of the first and bravest champions of woman's rights. +He has labored for our literature with an ability commensurate with his +zeal, and he has drawn many an unfledged genius from the nest, +encouraged him to try his wings, and magnetized him into +self-dependence. A bold heavenward flight has often been the +consequence. A prophecy of Neal's that an idea or a man would succeed, +has seldom failed of fulfillment. We can not say this of the many +aspiring magazines and periodicals that have solicited the charity of +his name. We recollect, when brass buttons were universally worn on +men's coats, a wag undertook to prove that they were very unhealthy, +from the fact that more than half the persons who wore them suffered +from chronic or acute disease, and died before they had reached a +canonical age. According to this mode of generalization, Neal could be +convicted of causing the premature death of nine tenths of the defunct +periodicals in this country—probably no great sin, if it really lay at +his door.</p> + +<p>In a brief outline sketch, such as we have chosen to produce, our +readers will perceive that only slight justice can be done to a man in +the manifold relations to men and things which contribute to form the +character.</p> + +<p>John Neal's personal appearance is a credit to the country. He is tall, +with a broad chest, and a most imposing presence. One of the finest +sights we ever saw, was Neal standing with his arms folded before a fine +picture. His devotion to physical exercise, and his personal example to +his family in the practice of it—training his wife and children to take +the sparring-gloves and cross the foils with him in those graceful +attitudes which he could perfectly teach, because they were fully +developed in himself—all this has inevitably contributed to the health +and beauty of his beautiful family.</p> + +<p>Few men have had so many right ideas of the art or science of living as +John Neal, and fewer still have acted upon them so faithfully. When we +last saw him, some ten years since—when he had lived more than half a +century—his eye had lost none of its original fire, not a nerve or +sinew was unbraced by care, labor, or struggle. He stood before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> us, a +noble specimen of the strong and stalwart growth of a new and +unexhausted land.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Note</span>,—The foregoing must have been written years ago, if +one may judge by the color of the paper; and as the writer is now +abroad, so as not to be within reach, the manuscript has been put +into the hands of a gentleman who has been more or less acquainted +with Mr. Neal from his boyhood up, and he has consented to finish +the article by bringing down the record to our day, and putting on +what he calls a 'snapper.'</p></div> + +<p>Most of what follows, if we do not wholly misunderstand the intimations +that accompany the manuscript, is in the very language of Mr. Neal +himself word for word; gathered up we care not how, whether from +correspondence or conversation, so that there is no breach of manly +trust and no indecorum to be charged.</p> + +<p>'As to my family,' he writes, in reply to some body's questioning, 'I +know not where they originated, nor how. Sometimes I have thought, +although I have never said as much before, that we must have come up of +ourselves—the spontaneous growth of a rude, rocky soil, swept by the +boisterous north-wind, and washed by the heavy surges of some great +unvisited sea. Of course, the writer you mention, who says that my +ancestors—if I ever had any—'came from Scotland,' must know something +that I never heard of, to the best of my recollection and belief. +Somewhere in England I have supposed they originated, and probably along +the coast of Essex; for there, about Portsmouth and Dover, I have always +felt so much at home in the graveyards—among my own household, as it +were, the names being so familiar to me, and the grave-stones now to be +seen in Portsmouth and Dover, New-Hampshire, where the Neals were first +heard of three or four generations ago, being duplicates of some I saw +in Portsmouth and Dover, England.</p> + +<p>'Others have maintained, with great earnestness and plausibility, as if +it were something to brag of, that we have the blood of Oliver Cromwell +in us; and one, at least, who has gone a-field into heraldry, and +strengthens every position with armorial bearings—which only goes to +show the unprofitableness of all such labor, so far as we are +concerned—that we are of the '<i>red</i> O'Neals,' not the <i>learned</i> +O'Neals, if there ever were any, but the 'red O'Neals of Ireland,' and +that I am, in fact, a lineal descendant of that fine fellow who +'<i>bearded</i>' Queen Elizabeth in her presence-chamber, with his right hand +clutching the hilt of his dagger.</p> + +<p>'But, for myself, I must acknowledge that if I ever had a +great-great-grandfather, I know not where to dig for him—on my father's +side, I mean; for on the side of my mother I have lots of grandfathers +and great-grandfathers—and furthermore this deponent sayeth not—up to +the days of George Fox; enough, I think, to show clearly that the Neals +did not originate among the aborigines of the New World, whatever may be +supposed to the contrary. And so, in a word, the whole sum and substance +of all I know about my progenitors, male and female, is, that they were +always a sober-minded, conscientious, hard-working race, with a way and +a will of their own, and a habit of seeing for themselves, and judging +for themselves, and taking the consequences.</p> + +<p>'Nor is it true that I am a 'large' or 'tall' man, though, in some +unaccountable way, always passing for a great deal more than I would +ever measure or weigh; and my own dear mother having lived and died in +the belief that I was good six feet, and well-proportioned, like my +father. My inches never exceeded five feet eight-and-a-half, and my +weight never varied from one hundred and forty-seven to one hundred and +forty-nine pounds, for about five-and-forty years; after which, getting +fat and lazy, I have come to weigh from one hundred and sixty-five to +one hundred and seventy-five pounds, without being an inch taller, I am +quite sure.'</p> + +<p>Mr. Neal owns up, it appears, to the following publications, omitted by +the writer of the article you mentioned: 'Rachel Dyer,' one volume; +'Authorship,' one volume; 'Brother Jonathan,' three volumes, (English +edition;) 'Ruth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> Elder,' one volume; 'One Word More;' 'True Womanhood,' +one volume; magazine articles, reviews, and stories in most of the +British and American monthlies, and in some of the quarterlies, to the +amount of twenty volumes, at least, duodecimo. In addition to which, he +has been a liberal contributor all his life to some of the ablest +newspapers of the age, and either sole or sub-editor, or associate, in +perhaps twenty other enterprises, most of which fell through.</p> + +<p>He claims, too—being a modest man—and others who know him best +acknowledge his claims, we see—that he revolutionized <i>Blackwood</i> and +the British periodical press, at a time when they were all against us; +that he began the war on titles in this country, that he broke up the +lottery system and the militia system, and proposed (through the +<i>Westminster Review</i>) the only safe and reasonable plan of emancipation +that ever appeared; that with him originated the question of woman's +rights; that he introduced gymnasia to our people; and, in short, that +he has always been good for something, and always lived to some purpose. +'And furthermore deponent sayeth not.'</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_SOLDIER_AND_THE_CIVILIAN" id="THE_SOLDIER_AND_THE_CIVILIAN"></a>THE SOLDIER AND THE CIVILIAN.</h2> + + +<p>When Charles Dickens expressed regret for having written his foolish +<i>American Notes</i>, and <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>, he 'improved the occasion' to +call us a large-hearted and good-natured people, or something to that +effect—I have not his <i>peccavi</i> by me, and write from 'a favorable +general impression.'</p> + +<p>It is not weak vanity which may lead any American to claim that in this +compliment lies a great truth. The American <i>is</i> large-hearted and +good-natured, and when a few of his comrades join in a good work, he +will aid them with a lavish and Jack-tar like generosity. Charity is +peculiarly at home in America. A few generations have accumulated, in +all the older States, hospitals, schools, and beneficent institutions, +practically equal in every respect to those which have been the slow +growth of centuries in any European country. The contributions to the +war, whether of men or money, have been incredible. And there is no +stint and no grumbling. The large heart is as large and generous as +ever.</p> + +<p>The war has, however, despite all our efforts, become an almost settled +institution. This is a pity—we all feel it bitterly, and begin to grow +serious. Still there is no flinching. Flinching will not help; we must +go on in the good cause, in God's name. 'Shall there not be clouds as +well as sunshine?' 'Go in, then'—that is agreed upon. Draft your men, +President Lincoln; raise your money, Mr. Chase, we are ready. To the +last man and the last dollar we are ready. History shall speak of the +American of this day as one who was as willing to spend money for +national honor as he was earnest and keen in gathering it up for private +emolument. Go ahead!</p> + +<p>But let us do every thing advisedly and wisely.</p> + +<p>In the first flush of war, it was not necessary to look so closely at +the capital. We pulled out our loose change and bank-notes, and +scattered them bravely—as we should. Now that more and still more are +needed, we should look about to see how to turn every thing to best +account. For instance, there is the matter of soldiers. Those who rose +in 1861, and went impulsively to battle, acted gloriously—even more +noble will it be with every volunteer who <i>now</i>, after hearing of the +horrors of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> war, still resolutely and bravely shoulders the musket and +dares fate. God sends these times to the world and to men as 'jubilees' +in which all who have lost an estate, be it of a calling or a social +position, may regain it or win a new one.</p> + +<p>But still we want to present <i>every</i> inducement. Already the lame and +crippled soldiers are beginning to return among us. The poor souls, +ragged and sun-burnt, may be seen at every corner. They sit in the parks +with unhealed wounds; they hobble along the streets, many of them weary +and worn; poor fellows! they are greater, and more to be envied than +many a fresh fopling who struts by. And the people feel this. They treat +them kindly, and honor them.</p> + +<p>But would it not be well if some general action could be adopted on the +subject of taking care of all the incurables which this war is so +rapidly sending us? If every township in America would hold meetings and +provide honorably in some way for the returned crippled soldiers, they +would assume no great burden, and would obviate the most serious +drawback which the country is beginning to experience as regards +obtaining volunteers. It has already been observed by the press, that +the scattering of these poor fellows over the country is beginning to +have a discouraging effect on those who should enter the army. It is a +pity; we would very gladly ignore the fact, and continue to treat the +question solely <i>con entusiasmo</i>, and as at first; but what is the use +of endeavoring to shirk facts which will only weigh more heavily in the +end from being inconsidered now? Let us go to work generously, +great-heartedly, and good-naturedly, to render the life of every man who +has been crippled for the country as little of a burden as possible.</p> + +<p>Dear readers, it will not be sufficient to guarantee to these men a +pauper's portion among you. I do not pretend to say what you should give +them, or what you should do for them. I only know that there are but two +nations on the face of the earth capable of holding town-meetings and +acting by spontaneous democracy for themselves. One of these is +represented by the Russian serfs, who administer their <i>mir</i> or +'commune' with a certain beaver-like instinct, providing for every man +his share of land, his social position, his rights, so far as they are +able. The Englishman, or German, or Frenchman, is <i>not</i> capable of this +natural town-meeting sort of action. He needs 'laws,' and government, +and a lord or a squire in the chair, or a demagogue on the rostrum. The +poor serf does it by custom and instinct.</p> + +<p>The Bible Communism of the Puritans, and the habit of discussing all +manner of secular concerns in meeting, originated this same ability in +America. To this, more than to aught else, do we owe the growth of our +country. One hundred Americans, transplanted to the wild West and left +alone, will, in one week, have a mayor, and 'selectmen,' a town-clerk, +and in all probability a preacher and an editor. One hundred Russian +serfs will not rise so high as this; but leave them alone in the steppe, +and they will organize a <i>mir</i>, elect a <i>starosta</i>, or 'old man,' divide +their land very honestly, and take care of the cripples!</p> + +<p>Such nations, but more especially the American, can find out for +themselves, much better than any living editor can tell them, how to +provide liberally for those who fought while they remained at home. The +writer may suggest to them the subject—they themselves can best 'bring +it out.'</p> + +<p>In trials like these it is very essential that our habits of meeting, +discussing and practically acting on such measures, should be more +developed than ever. We have come to the times which <i>test</i> republican +institutions, and to crises when the public meeting—the true +corner-stone of all our practical liberties—should be brought most +boldly, freely, and earnestly into action. Politics and feuds should +vanish from every honorable and noble mind, and all unite in cordial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> +coöperation for the good work. Friends, there is <i>nothing</i> you can not +do, if you would only get together, inspire one another, and do your +<i>very best</i>. You could raise an army which would drive these rebel +rascals howling into their Dismal Swamps, or into Mexico, in a month, if +you would only combine in earnest and do all you can.</p> + +<p>Hitherto the man of ease, and the Respectable, disgusted by the +politicians, has neglected such meetings, and left them too much to the +Blackguard to manage after his own way. But this is a day of politics no +longer; at least, those who try to engineer the war with a view to the +next election, are in a fair way to be ranked with the enemies of the +country, and to earn undying infamy. The only politics which the honest +man now recognizes is, the best way to save the country; to raise its +armies and fight its battles. It is not McClellan or anti-McClellan, +which we should speak of, but anti-Secession. And paramount among the +principal means of successfully continuing the war, I place this, of +properly caring for the disabled soldier, and of placing before those +who have not as yet enlisted, the fact, that come what may, they will be +well looked after, for life.</p> + +<p>As I said, the common-sense of our minor municipalities will abundantly +provide for these poor fellows, if a spirit can be awakened which shall +sweep over the country and induce the meetings to be held. In many, +something has already been done. But something liberal and large is +requisite. Government will undoubtedly do its share; and this, if +properly done, will greatly relieve our local commonwealths. Here, +indeed, we come to a very serious question, which has been already +discussed in these pages—more boldly, as we are told, than our +cotemporaries have cared to treat it, and somewhat in advance of others. +We refer to our original proposition to liberally divide Southern lands +among the army, and convert the retired soldier to a small planter. Such +men would very soon contrive to hire the 'contraband,' get him to +working, and make something better of him than planterocracy ever did. +At least, this is what Northern ship-captains and farmers contrive to +do, in their way, with numbers of coal-black negroes, and we have no +doubt that the soldier-planter will manage, 'somehow,' to get out a +cotton-crop, even with the aid of hired negroes! Here, again, a bounty +could be given to the wounded. Observe, we mean a bounty which shall, to +as high a degree as is possible or expedient, fully recompense a man for +losing a limb. And as we can find in Texas alone, land sufficient to +nobly reward a vast proportion of our army, it will be seen that I do +not propose any excessive or extravagant reward.</p> + +<p>Between our municipalities and our government, <i>much</i> should be done. +But will not this prove a two-stool system of relief, between which the +disbanded soldier would fall to the ground? Not necessarily. Let our +towns and villages do their share, pledging themselves to take <i>good</i> +care of the disabled veteran, and to find work for all until Government +shall apportion the lands of the conquered among the army.</p> + +<p>And let all this be done <i>soon</i>. Let it forthwith form a part of the +long cried for 'policy' which is to inspire our people. If this had been +a firmly determined thing from the beginning, and if we had <i>dared</i> to +go bravely on with it, instead of being terrified at every proposal to +<i>act</i>, by the yells and howls of the Northern secessionists, we might +have cleared Dixie out as fire clears tow. 'The enemy,' said one who had +been among them, 'have the devil in them.' If our men had something +solid to look forward to, they too, would have the devil in them, and no +mistake. They fight bravely as it is, without much inducement beyond +patriotism and a noble cause. But the 'secesh' soldier has more than +this—he has the desperation of a traitor in a bad cause, of a fanatic +and of a natural savage. It is no slur at the patriotism of our troops +to say that they would fight better for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> such a splendid inducement as +we hold out.</p> + +<p>We may as well do all we can for the army—at home and away, here and +there, with all our hearts and souls. For it will come to that sooner or +later. The army is a terrible power, and its power has been, and is to +be, terribly exerted. If we would organize it betimes, prevent it from +becoming a social trouble, or rather make of it a great social support +and a <i>help</i> instead of a future hindrance and a drag, we must be busy +at work providing for it. There it is—destined, perhaps, to rise to a +million—the flower, strength, and intellect of America, our productive +force, our brain—yes, the great majority of our mills, and looms, and +printing-presses, and all that is capital-producing, are there, in those +uniforms. There, friends, lie towns and cities, towers and palace-halls, +literature and national life—for there are the brains and arms which +make these things. Those uniforms are not to be, at least, <i>should not</i> +be, forever there. But manage meanly and weakly and stingily <i>now</i>, and +you destroy the cities and fair castles, the uniform remains in the +myriad ranks, war becomes interminable, the soldier becomes nothing but +a soldier—God avert the day!—and you will find yourself some day +telling your grand-children—if you have any, for I can inform you that +the chances of war diminish many other chances—how 'things <i>might</i> have +been, and how finely we <i>might</i> have conquered the enemy and had an +undivided country—God bless us!'</p> + +<p>Will the WOMEN of America take no active part in this movement?</p> + +<p>Many years ago, a German writer—one Kirsten—announced the +extraordinary fact, that in the Atlantic States the proportion of women +who died unmarried, or of 'old maids,' was larger than in any European +country. It is certainly true that, owing to the high standard of +expenses adopted by the children of respectable American parents—and +what American is not 'respectable'?—we are far less apt to rush into +'imprudent' marriages than is generally supposed. But what proportion of +unmarried dames will there be, if drafting continues, and the war +becomes a permanent annual subject of draft? The prospect is seriously +and simply frightful! The wreck of morality in France caused by +Napoleon's wars is notorious, for previous to that time the French +peasantry were not so debauched as they subsequently became. But this +shocking subject requires no comment.</p> + +<p>On with the war! Drive it, push it, send it howling and hissing on like +the wild tornado, like the mad levin-brand, right into the foe! Pay the +soldier—promise—pledge—do any thing and every thing; but raise an +overwhelming force, and end the war.</p> + +<p>Up and fight!</p> + +<p>It is better to die now than see such disaster as awaits this country if +war become a fixed disease.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VOLUNTEER_BOYS_1750" id="VOLUNTEER_BOYS_1750"></a>VOLUNTEER BOYS. [1750.]</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Hence with the lover who sighs o'er his wine,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Chloes and Phillises toasting;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hence with the slave who will whimper and whine,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of ardor and constancy boasting;<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Hence with Love's joys,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Follies and noise.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The toast that <i>I</i> give is: 'The Volunteer Boys!''<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="AUTHOR-BORROWING" id="AUTHOR-BORROWING"></a>AUTHOR-BORROWING.</h2> + + +<p>Bulwer, in narrating the literary career of a young Chinese, states how +one of his works was very severely handled by the Celestial critics: one +of the gravest of the charges brought against it by these poll-shaved, +wooden-shod, little-foot-worshiping, Great-Wall-building mandarins of +literature being its extreme originality! They denounced Fihoti as +having sinned the unpardonable literary sin of writing a book, a large +share of whose ideas was nowhere to be found in the writings of +Confucius.</p> + +<p>But how strange such a charge would sound in our English ears! With us, +if between two authors the most remote resemblance of idea or expression +can be detected, straightway some ultraist stickler for +originality—some Poe—shrieks out, 'Some body must be a thief!' and +forthwith, all along the highways of reviewdom, is sent up the hue and +cry: 'Stop thief! stop thief!' For has not the law thundered from Sinai, +'Thou shalt not steal'? True, plagiarism is nowhere distinctly forbidden +by Moses; but have not critics judicially pronounced it author-<i>theft</i>? +Has not metaphor been sounded through every note of its key-board, to +strike out all that is base whereunto to liken it? Have not old Dr. +Johnson's seven-footed words—the tramp of whose heavy brogans has +echoed down the staircase of years even unto our day—declared +plagiarists from the works of buried writers 'jackals, battening on dead +men's thoughts'?</p> + +<p>And yet, after a vast deal of such like catachresis, the orthodoxy of +plagiarism remains still in dispute. What we incorporate among the +cardinal articles of literary faith, China abjures as a dangerous +heresy. But neither our own nor the Chinese creed consists wholly of +tested bullion, but is crude ore, in which the pure gold of truth is +mingled with the dross of error. That is a golden tenet of the +tea-growers which licenses the borrowing of ideas; that 'of the earth, +earthy,' which embargoes every one unborrowed. We build upon a rock when +interdicting plagiarism; but on sand when we make that term inclose +author-theft and author-borrowing. The making direct and unacknowledged +quotations, and palming them off as the quoter's, is a very grave +literary offense. But the expression of similar or even identical +thoughts in different language, in this age of the world must be +tolerated, or else the race of authors soon become as extinct as that of +behemoths and ichthyosauri; and, indeed, far from levying any imposts +upon author-borrowing, rather ought we to vote bounties and pensions to +encourage it.</p> + +<p>Originality of thought with men is impossible. There is in existence a +certain amount of thought, but it all belongs to God. Lord paramount +over the empire of mind as well as matter, he alone is seized, in fee +simple right, of the whole domain: provinces of which men hold, as +fiefs, by vassal tenure, subject to reversion and enfeoffment to +another. Nor can any man absolve himself from his allegiance, and extend +absolute sovereignty over broad tracts of idea-territory; for while +feudal princes vested in themselves, by conquest merely, the ownership +of kingdoms, God became suzerain over the empire of thought by virtue of +creation—for creation confers right of property. We do not, then, +originate the thoughts we call our own; or else Pantheism tells no lie +when it declares that man is God, for the differentia which +distinguishes God from man is absolute creative power. And if man be +thought-creative, he can as well as God give being unto what was +non-existent, and that, too, not mere gross, perishable matter, but +immortal soul; for thought is mind, and mind is spirit, soul, undying, +immortal. Grant that, and you divide God's empire, and enthrone the +creature in equal sovereignty beside his Maker.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p> + +<p>All thought, then, belongs exclusively to God, and is parceled out by +him, as he chooses, among his creature feudatories. As the wind, which +bloweth where it listeth, and no one knoweth whence it cometh, save that +it is sent by God, so is thought, as it blows through our minds. Over +birds, flying at liberty through the free air, boys often advance claims +of ownership more specific than are easily derived from the general +dominion God gave man over the beasts of the field and the birds of the +air; yet, 'All those birds are mine!' exclaims a youngster in +roundabout, with just as much reason as any man can claim, as +exclusively his own, the thoughts which are ever winging their way +through the firmament of mind.</p> + +<p>But considered apart from the relation we sustain to God, none of us are +original with respect to our fellow-men. Few, indeed, are the ideas we +derive by direct grant, or through nature, from our liege lord; but far +the greater share, by hooks or personal contact, we gather through our +fellow-men. Consciously, unconsciously, we all teach—we all learn from, +one another. Association does far more toward forming mind than natural +endowments. As not alone the soil whence it springs makes the oak, but +surrounding elements contribute. Seclude a human mind entirely from +hooks and men, and you may have a man with no ideas borrowed from his +fellows. Such a one, in Germany, once grew up from childhood to manhood +in close imprisonment, and poor Kasper Hauser proved—an idiot. It can +hardly be necessary to suggest the well-known fact, that the greatest +readers of men and books always possess the greatest minds. Such are, +besides, of the greatest service to mankind. For since God has so formed +us that we love to give as well as take, a great independent mind, +complete in itself and incapable of receiving from others, must always +stand somewhat apart from men; and even a great heart, when +conjoined—as it seldom is—with a great head, is rarely able to +drawbridge over the wide moat which intrenches it in solitary +loneliness. Originality ever links with it something of +uncongeniality—a feeling somewhat akin to the egotism of that one who, +when asked why he talked so much to himself, replied—for two reasons: +the one, that he liked to talk to a sensible man; the other, that he +liked to hear a sensible man talk. Divorcing itself from +fellow-sympathies, it broods over its own perfections, till, like +Narcissus, it falls in love with itself. And so, a highly original man +can rarely ever be a highly popular man or author. By the very +super-abundance of his excellencies, his usefulness is destroyed; just +as Tarpeia sank, buried beneath the presents of the Sabine soldiery. A +Man once appeared on earth, of perfect originality; and in him, to an +unbounded intellect was added boundless moral power. But men received +him not. They rejected his teachings; they smote him; they crucified +him.</p> + +<p>But though the right of eminent domain over ideas does and should inhere +in one superior to us, far different is the case with words. These +'incarnations of thought' are of man's device, and therefore his; and +style—the peculiar manner in which one uses words to express ideas—is +individually personal. Indeed, style has been defined the man himself; a +definition, so far as he is recognized only as a revealer of thought, +substantially correct. In an idea word-embodied, the embodier, then, +possesses with God concurrent ownership. The idea itself may be +borrowed, or it may be his so far as discovery gives title; but the +words, in their arrangement, are absolutely his. All ideas are like +mathematical truths: eternal and unchangeable in their essence, and +originate in nature; words like figures, of a fixed value, but of human +invention; and sentences are formulæ, embodying oftentimes the same +essential truth, but in shapes as various as their paternity. Words, in +sentences, should then be inviolate to their author.</p> + +<p>Nor is this to value words above ideas—the flesh above the spirit of +which it is but the incarnation. It is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> not the intrinsic value of each +that we here regard, but the value of the ownership one has in each. +'Deacon Giles and I,' said a poor man, 'own more cows than any five +other men in the county.' 'How many does Deacon Giles own?' asked a +bystander. 'Nineteen.' 'And how many do you?' 'One.' And that one cow, +which that poor man owned, was worth more to <i>him</i> than the nineteen +which were Deacon Giles's. So, when you have determined whose the style +is which enfolds a thought, whose the thought is, is as little worth +dispute as, after its wrappage of corn has been shelled off, the cob's +ownership is worth a quarrel.</p> + +<p>As thoughts bodied in words uttered make up conversation, thought +incarnate in words written constitutes literature. The gross sum of +thought with which God has seen to dower the human mind, though vast, is +finite, and may be exhausted. Indeed, we are told this had been already +done so long ago as times whereof Holy Writ takes cognizance. Since that +time, then, men have been echoing and reëchoing the same old ideas. And +though words, too, are finite, their permutations are infinite. What +Himalayan piles of paper, river-coursed by Danubes and Niagaras of ink, +hath the 'itch of writing' aggregated! And yet, Ganganelli says that +every thing that man has ever written might be contained within six +thousand folio volumes, if filled with only original matter. But how +books lie heaped on one another, weighing down those under, weighed down +by those above them; each crushed and crushing; their thoughts, like +bones of skeletons corded in convent vault, mingled in confusion—like +those which Hawthorne tells us Miriam saw in the burial-cellar of the +Capuchin friars in Rome, where, when a dead brother had lain buried an +allotted period, his remains, removed from earth to make room for a +successor, were piled with those of others who had died before him.</p> + +<p>It is said Aurora once sought and gained from Jove the boon of +immortality for one she loved; but forgetting to request also perpetual +youth, Tithonus gradually grew old, his thin locks whitened, his wasting +frame dwindled to a shadow, and his feeble voice thinned down till it +became inaudible. And just so ideas, although immortal, were it not for +author-borrowers, through age grown obsolete, might virtually perish. +But by and by, just as some precious thought is being lost unto the +world, let there come some Medea, by whose potent sorcery that old and +withered idea receives new life-blood through its shrunken veins, and it +starts to life again with recreated vigor—another Æson, with the bloom +of youth upon him. Besides in this way playing the physician to save old +ideas from a burial alive, the author-borrower often delivers many a +prolific mother-thought of a whole family of children—as a prism from +out a parent ray of colorless light brings all the bright colors of the +spectrum, which, from red to violet, were all waiting there only for its +assistance to leap into existence; or sometimes he plays the parson, +wedlocking thoughts from whose union issue new; as from yellow wedded to +red springs orange, a new, a secondary life; or enacts, maybe, the +brood-hen's substitute. Many a thought is a Leda egg, imprisoning twin +life-principles, which,, incubated in the eccaleobion brain of an +author-borrower, have blessed the world; but without such a +foster-parent, in some neglected nest staled and addled, had never burst +the shell.</p> + +<p>Author-borrowing should also be encouraged, because it tends to +language's perfection, and thus to incrementing the value of the ideas +it vehicles; for though a gilding diction and elegant expression may not +directly increase a thought's intrinsic worth, yet by bestowing beauty +it increases its utility, and so adds relative value—just as a rosewood +veneering does to a basswood table. There may be as much raw timber in a +slab as in a bunch of shingles, but the latter is worth the most; it +will find a purchaser where the former would not. So there may be as +much truly valuable thought in a dull<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> sermon as in a lively lecture; +but the lecture will please, and so instruct, where the dull sermon will +fall on an inattentive ear. Moreover, author minds are of two classes, +the one deep-thinking, the other word-adroit. Providence bestows her +favors frugally; and with the power of quarrying out huge lumps of +thought, ability to work them over into graceful form is rarely given. +This is no new doctrine, but a truth clearly recognized in metaphysics, +and evidenced in history. Cromwell was a prodigious thinker; but in +language, oh! how deficient. His thoughts, struggling to force +themselves out of that sphynx-like jargon which he spake and wrote, +appear like the treasures of the shipwrecked Trojans, swimming '<i>rari in +gurgite vasto</i>'—Palmyra columns, reared in the midst of a desert of +sentences. And Coleridge—than whom in the mines of mental science few +have dug deeper, and though Xerxes-hosts of word-slaves waited on his +pen—often wrote apparently mere bagatelle—the most transcendental +nonsense. Yet he who takes the pains to husk away his obscurity of style +will find solid ears of thought to recompense his labor. Bentham and +Kant required interpreters—Dumont and Cousin—to make understood what +was well worth understanding. These two kinds of +authors—thought-creditors and borrowing expressionists—are as mutually +necessary to each other to bring out idea in its most perfect shape, as +glass and mercury to mirror objects. Dim, indeed, is the reflection of +the glass without its coating of quicksilver; and amalgam, without a +plate on which to spread it, can never form a mirror. The metal and the +silex are</p> + + +<p class='center'>'Useless each without the other;'</p> + + +<p>but wed them, and from their union spring life-like images of life.</p> + +<p>But it may be objected that in trying to improve a thought we often mar +it; just as in transplanting shrubs from the barren soil in which they +have become fast rooted, to one more fertile, we destroy them. 'Just as +the fabled lamps in the tomb of Terentia burned underground for ages, +but when removed into the light of day, went out in darkness.' That this +sometimes occurs, we own. Some ideas are as fragile as butterflies, whom +to handle is to destroy. But such are exceptions only, and should not +preclude attempts at improvement. If a bungler tries and fails, let him +be Anathema, Maranathema; but let not his failure deter from trial a +genuine artist. Nor is it an ignoble office to be thus shapers only of +great thinkers' thoughts—Python interpreters to oracles. Nor is his +work of slight account who thus—as sunbeams gift dark thunder-clouds +with 'silver lining' and a fringe of purple, as Time with ivy drapes a +rugged wall—hangs the beauties of expression round a rude but sterling +thought. Nay, oftentimes the shaper's labor is worth more than the +thought he shapes. For if the stock out of which the work is wrought be +ever more valuable than the workman's skill, then let canvas and +paint-pots impeach the fame of Raphael; rough blocks from Paros and +Pentelicus, the gold and ivory of the Olympian Jove; tear from the brow +of Phidias the laurel wreath with which the world has crowned him. +Supply of raw material is little without the ability to use it. Furnish +three men with stone and mortar, and while one is building an unsightly +heap of clumsy masonry, the architect will rear up a magnificent +cathedral—an Angelo, a St. Peter's. And so when ideas, which in their +crudeness are often as hard to be digested as unground corn, are run +through the mill of another's mind, and appear in a shape suited to +satisfy the most dyspeptic stomachs, does not the miller deserve a toll?</p> + +<p>Finally, author-borrowing has been hallowed by its practice, in their +first essays, by all our greatest writers. Turn to the scroll on which +the world has written the names of those it holds as most illustrious. +How was it with him whom English readers love to call the +'myriad-minded?' Shakespeare began by altering old plays, and his +indebt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>edness to history and old legends is by no means slight. How with +him who sang 'of man's first disobedience' and exodus from Eden? Even +Milton did not, Elijah-like, draw down his fire direct from heaven, but +kindled with brands, borrowed from Greek and Hebrew altars, the +inspiration which sent up the incense-poetry of a Lost Paradise. And all +the while that Maro sang 'Arms and the Man,' a refrain from the harp of +Homer was sounding in his ears, unto whose tones so piously he keyed and +measured his own notes, that oftentimes we fancy we can hear the strains +of 'rocky Scio's blind old bard' mingling in the Mantuan's melody. If +thus it has been with those who sit highest and fastest on +Parnassus—the crowned kings of mind—how has it been with the mere +nobility? What are Scott's poetic romances, but blossomings of engrafted +scions on that slender shoot from out the main trunk of English +poetry—the old border balladry? Campbell's polished elegance of style, +and the 'ivory mechanism of his verse,' was born the natural child of +Beattie and Pope. Byron had Gifford in his eye when he wrote 'English +Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' and Spenser when he penned the +'Pilgrimage.' Pope, despairing of originality, and taking Dryden for his +model, sought only to polish and to perfect. Gray borrowed from Spenser, +Spenser from Chaucer, Chaucer from Dante, and Dante had ne'er been Dante +but for the old Pagan mythology. Sterne and Hunt and Keats were only</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Bees, in their own volumes hiving<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Borrowed sweets from others' gardens.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And thus it ever is. The inceptions of true genius are always +essentially imitations. A great writer does not begin by ransacking for +the odd and new. He re-models—betters. Trusting not hypotheses +unproven, he demonstrates himself the proposition ere he wagers his +faith on the corollary; and it is thus that in time he grows to be a +discoverer, an inventor, an <i>originator</i>.</p> + +<p>Toward originality all should steer; but can only hope to reach it +through imitation. For if originality be the Colchis where the golden +fleece of immortality is won, imitation must be the Argo in which we +sail thither.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="INTERVENTION" id="INTERVENTION"></a>INTERVENTION.</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Intervene! and see what you'll catch<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In a powder-mill with a lighted match.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Intervene! if you think fit,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By jumping into the bottomless pit.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Intervene! How you'll gape and gaze<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When you see all Europe in a blaze!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Russia gobbling your world half in,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Red Republicans settling with <i>sin</i>;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Satan broke loose and nothing between—<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>That's</i> what you'll catch if you intervene!<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="MACCARONI_AND_CANVAS" id="MACCARONI_AND_CANVAS"></a>MACCARONI AND CANVAS.</h2> + +<h3>VII.</h3> + + +<h4><a name="TITIANO" id="TITIANO"></a>'A REEL TITIANO FOR SAL.'</h4> + +<p>There was a shop occupied by a dealer in paintings, engravings, +intaglios, old crockery, and <i>Bric-à-brac</i>-ery generally, down the Via +Condotti, and into this shop Mr. William Browne, of St. Louis, one +morning found his way. He had been induced to enter by reading in the +window, written on a piece of paper,</p> + +<p class='center'>'A REEL TITIANO FOR SAL,'</p> + +<p>and as he wisely surmised that the dealer intended to notify the English +that he had a painting by Titian for sale, he went in to see it.</p> + +<p>Unfortunately for Mr. Browne, familiarly known as Uncle Bill, he had one +of those faces that invariably induced Roman tradesmen to resort to the +Oriental mode of doing business, namely, charging three hundred per cent +profit; and as this dealer having formerly been a courier, +commissionaire and pander to English and American travelers, naturally +spoke a disgusting jargon of Italianized English, and had what he +believed were the most distinguished manners: <i>he</i> charged five hundred +per cent.</p> + +<p>'I want,' said Uncle Bill to the 'brick-Bat' man, 'to see your Titian.'</p> + +<p>'I shall expose 'im to you in one moment, sare; you walk this way. He's +var' fine pickshoor, var' fine. You ben long time in Rome, sare?'</p> + +<p>No reply from Uncle Bill: his idea was, even a wise man may ask +questions, but none but fools answer fools.</p> + +<p>Brick-bat man finds that his customer has ascended the human scale one +step; he prepares 'to spring dodge' Number two on him.</p> + +<p>'Thare, sar, thare is Il Tiziano! I spose you say you see notheeng bote +large peas board: zat peas board was one táble for two, tree hundret +yars; all zat time ze pickshoor was unbeknounst undair ze táble. Zey +torn up ze table, and you see a none-doubted Tiziano. Var' fine +pickshoor!'</p> + +<p>'Do you know,' asked Uncle Bill, 'if it was in a temperance family all +that time?'</p> + +<p>'I am not acquent zat word, demprance—wot it means?'</p> + +<p>'Sober,' was the answer.</p> + +<p>'Yas, zat was in var' sobair fam'ly—in convent of nons.'</p> + +<p>'That will account for its being undiscovered so long—all the world +knows they are not inquisitive! If it had been in a drinking-house, some +body falling under the table would have seen it—wouldn't they?'</p> + +<p>Brick-bat reflects, and comes to the conclusion that the 'eldairly cove' +is wider-awake than he believed him, at first sight.</p> + +<p>'Now I torne zis board you see on ze othaire side, ze Bella Donna of +Tiziano. Zere is one in ze Sciarra palace, bote betwane you and I, I +don't believe it is gin'wine.'</p> + +<p>'I don't know much about paintings,' spoke Uncle Bill, 'but I know I've +seen seventy-six of these Belli Donners, and each one was sworn to as +the original picture!'</p> + +<p>'Var' true, sare, var' true, Tiziano Vermecellio was grate pantaire, man +of grate mind, and when he got holt onto fine subjick he work him ovair +and ovair feefty, seexty times. Ze chiaro-'scuro is var' fine, and ze +depfs of his tone somethings var' deep, vary. Look at ze flaish, sare, +you can pinch him, and, sare, you look here, I expose grand secret to +you. I take zis pensnife, I scratgis ze pant. Look zare!'</p> + +<p>'Well,' said Uncle Bill, 'I don't see any thing.'</p> + +<p>'You don't see anne theengs! Wot you see under ze pant?'</p> + +<p>'It looks like dirt.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p> + +<p>'<i>Cospetto!</i> zat is ze gr-and prep-par-ra-tion zat makes ze flaish of +Tiziano more natooral as life. You know grate pantaire, Mistaire Leaf, +as lives in ze Ripetta? Zat man has spend half his lifes scratging +Tiziano all to peases, for find out 'ow he mak's flaish: now he believes +he found out ze way, bote, betwane you and I——' Here the Brick-bat +man conveyed, by a shake of his head and a tremolo movement of his left +hand, the idea that 'it was all in vain.'</p> + +<p>'What do you ask for the picture?' asked Uncle Bill</p> + +<p>The head of the Brick-bat man actually disappeared between his shoulders +as he shrugged them up, and extended his hands at his sides like the +flappers of a turtle. Uncle Bill looked at the man in admiration; he had +never seen such a performance before, save by a certain contortionist in +a traveling circus, and in his delight he asked the man, when his head +appeared, if he wouldn't do that once more, only once more!</p> + +<p>In his surprise at being asked to perform the trick, he actually went +through it again. For which, Uncle Bill thanked him, kindly, and again +asked the price of the Titian.</p> + +<p>'I tak' seex t'ousand scudi for him, not one baiocch less.'</p> + +<p>'It an't dear,'specially for those who have the money to +scatterlophisticate,' replied Uncle Bill cheerfully.</p> + +<p>'No, sare, it ees dogs chip, var' chip. I have sevral Englis' want to +buy him bad; I shall sell him some days to some bodies. Bote, sare, will +you 'ave ze goodniss to write down on peas paper zat word, var' fine +word, you use him minit 'go—scatolofistico sometheengs—I wis' to larn +ze Englis' better as I spiks him.'</p> + +<p>'Certainly; give me a pencil and paper, I'll write it down, and you'll +astonish some Englishman with it, I'll bet a hat.'</p> + +<p>So it was written down; and if any one ever entered a shop in the +Condotti where there was a Titiano for Sal, and was 'astonished' by +hearing that word used, they may know whence it came.</p> + +<p>Mr. Browne, after carefully examining the usual yellow marble model of +the column of Trajan, the alabaster pyramid of Caius Cestius, the verd +antique obelisks, the bronze lamps, lizards, marble <i>tazze</i>, and +paste-gems of the modern-antique factories, the ever-present Beatrice +Cenci on canvas, and the water-color costumes of Italy, made a purchase +of a Roman mosaic paper-weight, wherein there was a green parrot with a +red tail and blue legs, let in with minute particles of composition +resembling stone, and left the Brick-bat man alone with his Titiano for +Sal.</p> + + +<h4><a name="SO_LONG" id="SO_LONG"></a>SO LONG!</h4> + +<p>Rocjean came into Caper's studio one morning, evidently having something +to communicate.</p> + +<p>'Are you busy this morning? If not, come along with me; there is +something to be seen—something that beats the Mahmoudy Canal of the +Past, or the Suez Canal of the Present, for wholesale slaughter; for I +do assure you, on the authority of Hassel, that nine hundred and +thirty-six million four hundred and sixty-one thousand people died +before it was finished!'</p> + +<p>'That must be a work worth looking at. Why, the Pyramids must be as +anthills to Chimborazo in comparison to it! Nine hundred and odd +millions of mortals! Why, that is about the number dying in a +generation—and these have passed away while it was being completed? It +ought to be a master-piece.'</p> + +<p>'Can't we get a glass of wine round here?' asked Rocjean, looking at his +watch; 'it is about luncheon-time, and I have a charming little thirst.'</p> + +<p>'Oh! yes, there is a wine-shop only three doors from here, pure Roman. +Let us go: we can stand out in the street and drink if you are afraid to +go in.'</p> + +<p>Leaving the studio, they walked a few steps to a house that was +literally all front-door; for the entrance was the entire width of the +building, and a buffalo-team could have passed in without let. Outside +stood a wine-cart, from which they were unloading several small<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> casks +of wine. The driver's seat had a hood over it, protecting him from the +sun, as he lazily sleeps there, rumbling over the tufa road, to or from +the Campagna, and around the seat were painted in gay colors various +patterns of things unknown. In the autumn, vine-branches with pendent, +rustling leaves decorate hood and horse, while in spring or summer, a +bunch of flowers often ornaments this gay-looking wine-cart.</p> + +<p>The interior of the shop was dark, dingy, sombre, and dirty enough to +have thrown an old Flemish Interior artist into hysterics of delight. +There was an <i>olla podrida</i> browniness about it that would have +entranced a native of Seville; and a collection of dirt around, that +would have elevated a Chippeway Indian to an ecstasy of delight. The +reed-mattings hung against the walls were of a gulden ochre-color, the +smoked walls and ceiling the shade of asphaltum and burnt sienna, the +unswept stone pavement a warm gray, the old tables and benches very rich +in tone and dirt; the back of the shop, even at midday, dark, and the +eye caught there glimpses of arches, barrels, earthen jars, tables and +benches resting in twilight, and only brought out in relief by the faint +light always burning in front of the shrine of the Virgin, that hung on +one of the walls.</p> + +<p>In a wine-shop this shrine does not seem out of place, it is artistic; +but in a lottery-office, open to the light of day, and glaringly +common-place, the Virgin hanging there looks much more like the goddess +Fortuna than Santa Maria.</p> + +<p>But they are inside the wine-shop, and the next instant a black-haired +gipsy-looking woman with flashing, black eyes, warming up the sombre +color of the shop by the fiery red and golden silk handkerchief which +falls from the back of her head, Neapolitan fashion, illuminating that +dusky old den like fireworks, asks them what they will order?</p> + +<p>'A foglietta of white wine.'</p> + +<p>'Sweet or dry?' she asks.</p> + +<p>'Dry,' (<i>asciùtto</i>,) said Rocjean.</p> + +<p>There it is on the table, in a glass flask, brittle as virtue, light as +sin, and fragile as folly. They are called Sixtusses, after that pious +old Sixtus V. who hanged a publican and wine-seller sinner in front of +his shop for blasphemously expressing his opinion as to the correctness +of charging four times as much to put the fluoric-acid government stamp +on them as the glass cost. However, taxes must be raised, and the +thinner the glass the easier it is broken, so the Papal government +compel the wine-sellers to buy these glass bubbles, forbidding the sale +of wine out of any thing else save the <i>bottiglie</i>; and as it raises +money by touching them up with acid, why, the people have to stand it. +These <i>fogliette</i> have round bodies and long, broad necks, on which you +notice a white mark made with the before-mentioned chemical preparation; +up to this mark the wine should come, but the attendant generally takes +thumb-toll, especially in the restaurants where foreigners go, for the +Roman citizen is not to be swindled, and will have his rights: the +single expression, 'I AM A ROMAN CITIZEN,' will at times save him at +least two <i>baiocchi</i>, with which he can buy a cigar. There was a time +when these words would have checked the severest decrees of the highest +magistrate: now when they fire off 'that gun,' the French soldiers stand +at its mouth, laugh, and say; '<i>Boom!</i> you have no balls for your +cartridges!'</p> + +<p>The wine finished, our two artists took up their line of march for the +object that had outlived so many millions on millions of human beings, +and at last reached it, discovering its abode afar off, by the crowd of +fair-and unfair, or red-haired Saxons, who were thronging up a staircase +of a house near the Ripetta, as if a steamboat were ringing her last +bell and the plank were being drawn in.</p> + +<p>'And pray, can you tell me, Mister Buller, if it's a positive fact that +the man has been so long as they say, at work on the thing?'</p> + +<p>'And ah! I haven't the slightest doubt of it, myself. I've been told +that he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> has worked on it, to be sure, for full thirty years; and I may +say I am delighted, that he has it done at last, and that it is to be +packed up and sent away to St. Petersburg next week. And how do you like +the Hotel Minerva? I think it's not a very dirty inn, but the waiters +are very demanding, and the fleas—'</p> + +<p>'I beg you won't speak of them, it makes my blood run cold. Have you +seen the last copy of <i>Galignani</i>? The Americans, I am glad to see, have +had trouble with us, and I hope they will be properly punished. Do you +know the Duke of Bigghed is in town?'</p> + +<p>'Really! and when did he come—and where is the Duchess? oh!—she's a +very amiable lady—but here's the picture!'</p> + +<p>Ushered in, or preceded by this rattle-headed talk, Caper and Rocjean +stood at last before Ivanhof's celebrated painting—finished at last! +Thirty years' work, and the result?</p> + +<p>A very unsatisfactory stream of water, a crowd of Orientals, and our +Saviour descending a hill.</p> + +<p>The general impression left on the mind after seeing it, was like that +produced by a wax-work show. Nature was travestied; ease, grace, +freedom, were wanting: evidently the thirty years might have been better +spent collecting beetles or dried grasses.</p> + +<p>Around the walls of the studio hung sketches painted during visits the +artist had made to the East. Here were studies of Eastern heads, +costumes, trees, soil by river-side, sand in the desert, copied with +scrupulous care and precise truth, yet, when they were all together in +the great painting, the combined effect was a failure.</p> + +<p>The artist, they said, had, during this long period, received an annual +pension of so many roubles from the Russian government, and had taken +his time about it. At last it was completed; the painting that had +outlasted a generation was to be sent to St. Petersburg to hibernate +after a lifetime spent in sunny Italy. Well! after all, it was better +worth the money paid for it than that paid for nine tenths of those +kingly toys in the baby-house Green Chambers of Dresden. <i>Le Roi +s'amuse!</i></p> + +<p>And the white-haired Saxons came in shoals to the studio to see the +painting with thirty years' labor on it, and accordingly as their +oracles had judged it, so did they: for behold! gay colors are tabooed +in the mythology of the Pokerites, and are classed with perfumes, +dance-music, and jollity, and art earns a precarious livelihood in their +land, where all knowledge of it is supposed to be tied up with the +enjoyers of primogeniture.</p> + + +<h4><a name="ROMAN_THEATRES" id="ROMAN_THEATRES"></a>ROMAN THEATRES.</h4> + +<p>The Apollo, where grand opera, sandwiched with moral ballets, is given +for the benefit of foreigners, principally, would be a fine house if you +could only see it; but when Caper was in Rome, the oil-lamps, showing +you where to sit down, did not reveal its proportions, or the dresses of +the box-beauties, to any advantage; and as oil-lamps will smoke, there +settled a veil over the theatre towards the second act, that draped +Comedy like Tragedy, and then set her to coughing.</p> + +<p>During Carnival a melancholy ball or two was given there: a few wild +foreigners venturing in masked, believed they had mistaken the house, +for although many women were wandering around in domino, they found the +Roman young men unmasked, walking about dressed in canes and those +dress-coats, familiarly known as tail-coats, which cause a man to look +like a swallow with the legs of a crane, and wearing on their impassive +faces the appearance of men waiting for an oyster-supper—or an +earthquake.</p> + +<p>The commissionaire at the hotel always recommends strangers to go to the +Apollo: 'I will git you lôge, sare, first tier—more noble, sare.'</p> + +<p>The Capranica Theatre is next in size and importance; it is beyond the +Pantheon, out of the foreign quarter of Rome, and you will find in it a +Roman audience—to a limited extent. Salvini acted there in <i>Othello</i>, +and filled the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> character admirably; it is needless to say that Iago +received even more applause than Othello; Italians know such men +profoundly—they are Figaros turned undertakers. Opera was given at the +Capranica when the Apollo was closed.</p> + +<p>The Valle is a small establishment, where Romans, pure blood, of the +middle class, and the nobility who did not hang on to foreigners, were +to be found. Giuseppina Gassier, who has since sung in America, was +prima-donna there, appearing generally in the <i>Sonnambula</i>.</p> + +<p>But the Capranica Theatre was the resort for the Roman <i>minenti</i>, decked +in all their bravery. Here came the shoemaker, the tailor, and the small +artisan, all with their wives or women, and with them the wealthy +peasant who had ten cents to pay for entrance. Here the audience wept +and laughed, applauded the actors, and talked to each other from one +side of the house to the other. Here the plays represented Roman life in +the rough, and were full of words and expressions not down in any +dictionary or phrase-book; nor in these local displays were forgotten +various Roman peculiarities of accentuation of words, and curious +intonations of voice. The Roman people indulge in chest-notes, leaving +head-notes to the Neapolitans, who certainly do not possess such +smoothness of tongue as would classify them among their brethren in the +old proverb: 'When the confusion of tongues happened at the building of +the Tower of Babel, if the Italian had been there, Nimrod would have +made him a plasterer!'</p> + +<p>You will do well, if you want to learn from the stage and audience, the +Roman <i>plebs</i>, their customs and language, to attend the Capranica +Theatre often; to attend it in 'fatigue-dress,' and in gentle mood, +being neither shocked nor astonished if a good-looking Roman youth +should call your attention to the fact that there is a beautiful girl in +the box to the left hand, and inquire if you know whether she is the +daughter of Santi Stefoni, the grocer? And should the man on the other +side offer you some pumpkin-seeds to eat, by all means accept a few; you +can't tell what they may bring forth, if you will only plant them +cheerfully.</p> + +<p>Do not think it strange if a doctor on the stage recommends conserve of +vipers to a consumptive patient; for these poisonous reptiles are caught +in large numbers in the mountains back of Rome, and sold to the city +apothecaries, who prepare large quantities of them for their customers.</p> + +<p>When you see, perhaps the hero of the play, thrown into a paroxysm of +anger and fiery wrath by some untoward event, proceed calmly to cut up +two lemons, squeeze into a tumbler their juice, and then drink it +down—learn that it is a common Roman remedy for anger.</p> + +<p>Or if, when a piece of crockery, or other fragile article, may be +broken, you notice one of the actors carefully counting the pieces, do +not think it is done in order to reconstruct the article, but to guide +him in the purchase of a lottery-ticket.</p> + +<p>When you notice that on one of his hands the second finger is twined +over the first, of the Rightful-heir in presence of the Wrongful-heir, +you may know that the first is guarding himself against the Evil Eye +supposed to belong to the second.</p> + +<p>And—the list could be extended to an indefinite length—you will learn +more, by going to the Capranica.</p> + +<p>At the Metastasio Theatre there was a French vaudeville company, +passably good, attended by a French audience, the majority officers and +soldiers. Here were presented such attractive plays as <i>La Femme qui +Mord</i>, or 'The Woman who Bites;' <i>Sullivan</i>, the hero of which gets +<i>bien gris</i>, very gray, that is, blue, that is, very tipsy, and at the +close, astonishes the audience with the moral: To get tight is human! +<i>Dalilah</i>, etc., etc. The French are not very well beloved by the Romans +pure and simple; it is not astonishing, therefore, that their language +should be laughed at.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> One morning Rome woke up to find placards all +over the city, headed:<br /><br /></p> + + +<h3>FRENCH</h3> + +<h4>TAUGHT IN THIRTY-SIX LESSONS!</h4> + +<h5>Apply to Monsieur So-and-so.</h5> + + +<p>A few days afterward appeared a fearful wood-cut, the head of a jackass, +with his tongue hanging down several inches, and under it, these words, +in Italian: 'The only tongue yet learnt in less than thirty-six +lessons!'</p> + +<p>Caper, seated one night in the parquette of the Metastasio, had at his +side a French infantry soldier. In conversation he asked him:</p> + +<p>'How long have you been in Rome?'</p> + +<p>'Three years, <i>Mossu</i>.'</p> + +<p>'Wouldn't you like to return to France?'</p> + +<p>'Not at all.'</p> + +<p>'Why not?'</p> + +<p>'Wine is cheap, here, tobacco not dear, the ladies are extremely kind: +<i>voila tout!</i>'</p> + +<p>'You have all these in France.'</p> + +<p>'<i>Oui, Mossu!</i> but when I return there I shall be a farmer again; and +it's a frightful fact that you may plow your heart out without turning +up but a very small quantity of these articles there!'</p> + +<p>French soldiers still protect Rome—and 'these articles there.'</p> + + +<h4><a name="ART" id="ART"></a>THE BEARDS OF ART.</h4> + +<p>'Can you tell me,' said Uncle Bill Browne to Rocjean, with the air of a +man about to ask a hard conundrum, 'why beards, long hair, and art, +always go together?'</p> + +<p>'Of course, art draws out beards along with talent; paints and bristles +must go together; but high-art drives the hair of the head in, and +clinches it. Among artists first and last there have been men with giant +minds, and they have known it was their duty to show their mental power: +the beard is the index.'</p> + +<p>'But the beard points downward,' suggested Caper, 'and not upward.'</p> + +<p>'That depends——'</p> + +<p>'On <i>pomade Hongroise</i>—or beeswax,' interrupted Caper.</p> + +<p>'Exactly; but let me answer Uncle Bill. To begin, we may safely assert +that an artist's life—here in Rome, for instance—is about as +independent a one as society will tolerate; its laws, as to shaving +especially, he ignores, and caring very little for the Rules of the +Toilette, as duly published by the—<i>bon ton</i> journals, uses his razor +for mending lead-pencils, and permits his beard to enjoy long vacation +rambles. Again: those who first set the example of long beards, Leonardo +da Vinci, for example, who painted his own portrait with a full beard a +foot long, were men who moved from principle, and I have the belief that +were Leonardo alive to-day, he would say:</p> + +<p>"My son, and well-beloved Rocjean, <i>zitto!</i> and let ME talk. Know, then, +that I did permit my beard luxuriant length—for a reason. Thou dost not +know, but I do, that among the ancient Egyptians they worshiped in their +deity the male and female principle combined; so the exponents of this +belief, the Egyptian priests, endeavored in their attire to show a +mingling of the male and female sex; they wore long garments like women, +<i>vergogna!</i> they wore long hair, <i>guai!</i> and they SHAVED THEIR FACES! It +pains me to say, that their indecent example is followed even to this +day, by the priests of what should be a purer and better religion.</p> + +<p>"<i>Silenzio!</i> I have not yet said my say. Among Eastern nations, their +proverbs, and what is better, their customs, show a powerful protest +against this impure old faith. You have seen the flowing beards of the +Mohammedans, especially the Turks, and their short-shaved heads of hair, +and you may have heard of their words of wisdom:</p> + +<p>"'Long hair, little brain.'</p> + +<p>"And that eloquent sentence:</p> + +<p>"'Who has no beard has no authority.'</p> + +<p>"They have other sayings, which I can not approve of; for instance:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span></p> + +<p>"'Do not buy a red-haired person, do not sell one, either; if you have +any in the house, drive them away.'</p> + +<p>"I say I do not approve of this, for the majority of the English have +red heads, and people who want to buy my pictures I never would drive +out of my house, <i>mai!</i>"</p> + +<p>'Come,' said Caper, 'Leonardo no longer speaks when there is a question +of buying or selling. Assume the first person.'</p> + +<p>'Another excellent reason for artists in Rome to wear beards is, that +where their foreign names can not be pronounced, they are often called +by the size, color, or shape, of this face-drapery. This is particularly +the case in the Café Greco, where the waiters, who have to charge for +coffee, etc., when the artist does not happen to have the change about +him, are compelled to give him a name on their books, and in more than +one instance, I know that they are called from their beards, I have a +memorandum of these nicknames: I am called <i>Barbone</i>, or Big-bearded; +and you, Caper, are down as <i>Sbarbato Inglese</i>, the Shaved Englishman.'</p> + +<p>'Hm!' spoke Caper, 'I an't an Englishman, and I don't shave; my beard +has to come yet.'</p> + +<p>'What is my name?' asked Uncle Bill.</p> + +<p>'<i>Puga Sempre</i>, or He Pays Always. A countryman of mine is called <i>Baffi +Rici</i>, or Big Moustache; another one, <i>Barbetta</i>, Little Beard; another, +<i>Barbáccia</i>, Shabby Beard; another, <i>Barba Nera</i>, Black Beard; and, of +course, there is a <i>Barba Rossa</i>, or Red Beard. Some of the other names +are funny enough, and would by no means please their owners. There is +<i>Zoppo Francese</i>, the Lame Frenchman; <i>Scapiglione</i>, the Rowdy; +<i>Pappagallo</i>, the Parrot; <i>Milordo</i>; <i>Furioso</i>; and one friend of ours +is known, whenever he forgets to pay two baiocchi for his coffee, as +<i>San Pietro</i>!'</p> + +<p>'Well,' said Uncle Bill, 'I'll tell you why I thought you artists wore +long beards: that when you were hard up, and couldn't buy brushes, you +might have the material ready to make your own.'</p> + +<p>'You're wrong, Uncle,' remarked Caper; 'when we can't buy them, we get +trusted for them—that's our way of having a brush with the enemy.'</p> + +<p>'That will do, Jim, that will do; say no more. None of the artists' +beards here, can compare with one belonging to a buffalo-and-prairie +painter who lives out in St. Louis—it is so long he ties the ends +together and uses it for a boot-jack. Good-night, boys, good-night!'</p> + + +<h4><a name="PAINTER" id="PAINTER"></a>A CALICO-PAINTER.</h4> + +<p>Rocjean was finishing his after-dinnerical coffee and cigar, when +looking up from <i>Las Novedades</i>, containing the latest news from Madrid, +and in which he had just read <i>en Roma es donde hay mas mendigos</i>, Rome, +is where most beggars are found; London, where most engineers, lost +women, and rat-terriers, abound; Brussels, where women who smoke, are +all round—looking up from this interesting reading, he saw opposite him +a young man, whose acquaintance he knew at a glance, was worth making. +Refinement, common-sense, and energy were to be read plainly in his +face. When he left the café, Rocjean asked an artist, with long hair, +who was fast smoking himself to the color of the descendants of Ham, if +he knew the man?'</p> + +<p>'No-o-oo, I believe he's some kind of a calico-painter.'</p> + +<p>'What?'</p> + +<p>'Oh! a feller that makes designs for a calico-mill.'</p> + +<p>Not long afterward Rocjean was introduced to him, and found him, as +first impressions taught him he would—a man well worth knowing. Ho was +making a holiday-visit to Rome, his settled residence being in Paris, +where his occupation was designer of patterns for a large calico-mill in +the United States. A New-Yorker by birth, consequently more of a +cosmopolitan than the provincial life of our other American cities will +tolerate or can create in their children, Charles Gordon was every inch +a man,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> and a bitter foe to every liar and thief. He was well informed, +for he had, as a boy, been solidly instructed; he was polite, refined, +for he had been well educated. His life was a story often told: +mercantile parent, very wealthy; son sent to college; talent for art, +developed at the expense of trigonometry and morning-prayers; mercantile +parent fails, and falls from Fifth avenue to Brooklyn, preparatory to +embarking for the land of those who have failed and fallen—wherever +that is. Son wears long hair, and believes he looks like the painter who +was killed by a baker's daughter, writes trashy verses about a man who +was wronged, and went off and howled himself to a long repose, sick of +this vale of tears, et cetera. Finally, in the midst of his despair, +long hair, bad poetry and painting, an enterprising friend, who sees he +has an eye for color, its harmonies and contrasts, raises him with a +strong hand into the clear atmosphere of exertion for a useful and +definite end—makes him a 'calico-painter.'</p> + +<p>It was a great scandal for the Bohemians of art to find this +calico-painter received every where in refined and intelligent society, +while they, with all their airs, long hairs, and shares of impudence, +could not enter—they, the creators of Medoras, Magdalens, Our Ladies of +Lorette, Brigands' Brides, Madame not In, Captive Knights, Mandoline +Players, Grecian Mothers, Love in Repose, Love in Sadness, Moonlight on +the Waves, Last Tears, Resignation, Broken Lutes, Dutch Flutes, and +other mock-sentimental-titled paintings.</p> + +<p>'God save me from being a gazelle!' said the monkey.</p> + +<p>'God save us from being utility calico-painters!' cried the high-minded, +dirty cavaliers who were not cavaliers, as they once more rolled over in +their smoke-house.</p> + +<p>'In 1854,' said Gordon, one day, to Rocjean, after their acquaintance +had ripened into friendship, 'I was indeed in sad circumstances, and was +passing through a phase of life when bad tobacco, acting on an empty +stomach, gave me a glimpse of the Land of the Grumblers. One long year, +and all that was changed; then I woke up to reality and practical life +in a 'Calico-Mill;' then I wrote the lines you have asked me about. Take +them for what they are worth.</p> + + +<h4><a name="REDIVIVUS" id="REDIVIVUS"></a>REDIVIVUS.</h4> + +<h4>MDCCCLVI</h4> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'He sat in a garret in Fifty-four,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To welcome Fifty-five.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'God knows,' said he, 'if another year<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Will find this man alive.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I was born for love, I live in song,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet loveless and songless I'm passing along,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And the world?—Hurrah!<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Great soul, sing on!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'He sat in the dark, in Fifty-four,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To welcome Fifty-five.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'God knows,' said he, 'if another year<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I'll any better thrive.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I was born for light, I live in the sun,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet in, darkness, and sunless, I'm passing on,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And the world?—Hurrah!<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Great soul, shine on!'<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'He sat in the cold, in Fifty-four,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To welcome Fifty-five.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'God knows,' said he, 'I'm fond of fire,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">From warmth great joy derive.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I was born warm-hearted, and oh! it's wrong<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For them all to coldly pass along:<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And the world?—Hurrah!<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Great soul, burn on!'<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'He sat in a home, in Fifty-five,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To welcome Fifty-six.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Throw open the doors!' he cried aloud,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">'To all whom Fortune kicks!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I was born for love, I was born for song,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And great-hearted MEN my halls shall throng.<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And the world?—Hurrah!<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Great soul, sing on!'<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'He sat in bright light, in Fifty-five,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To welcome Fifty-six.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'More lights!' he cried out with joyous shout,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">'Night ne'er with day should mix.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I was born for light, I live in the sun,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the joy of others my life's begun.<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And the world?—Hurrah!<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Great soul, shine on!'<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'He sat in great warmth, in Fifty-five,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To welcome Fifty-six,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In a glad and merry company<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of brave, true-hearted Bricks!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span><br /></span> +<span class="i0">'I was born for warmth, I was born for love,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I've found them all, thank GOD above!<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And the world?—Ah! bah!<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Great soul, move on!''<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h4><a name="PATRON" id="PATRON"></a>A PATRON OF ART.</h4> + +<p>The Roman season was nearly over: travelers were making preparations to +fly out of one gate as the Malaria should enter by the other; for, +according to popular report, this fearful disease enters, the last day +of April, at midnight, and is in full possession of the city on the +first day of May. Rocjean, not having any fears of it, was preparing not +only to meet it, but to go out and spend the summer with it; it costs +something, however, to keep company with La Malaria, and our artist had +but little money: he must sell some paintings. Now it was unfortunate +for him that though a good painter, he was a bad salesman; he never kept +a list of all the arrivals of his wealthy countrymen or other strangers +who bought paintings; he never ran after them, laid them under +obligations with drinks, dinners, and drives; for he had neither the +inclination nor that capital which is so important for a +picture-merchant to possess in order to drive—a heavy trade, and +achieve success—such as it is. Rocjean had friends, and warm ones; so +that whenever they judged his finances were in an embarrassed state, +they voluntarily sent wealthy sensible as well as wealthy insensible +patrons of art to his aid, the latter going as Dutch galliots laden with +doubloons might go to the relief of a poor, graceful felucca, thrown on +her beam-ends by a squall.</p> + +<p>One morning there glowed in Rocjean's studio the portly forms of Mr. and +Mrs. Cyrus Shodd, together with the tall, fragile figure of Miss Tillie +Shodd, daughter and heiress apparent and transparent. Rocjean welcomed +them as he would have manna in the desert, for he judged by the air and +manner of the head of the family, that he was on picture-buying bent. He +even gayly smiled when Miss Shodd, pointing out to her father, with her +parasol, some beauty in a painting on the easel, run its point along the +canvas, causing a green streak from the top of a stone pine to extend +from the tree same miles into the distant mountains of the Abruzzi-the +paint was not dry!</p> + +<p>She made several hysterical shouts of horror after committing this +little act, and then seating herself in an arm-chair, proceeded to take +a mental inventory of the articles of furniture in the studio.</p> + +<p>Mr. Shodd explained to Rocjean that he was a plain man:</p> + +<p>This was apparent at sight.</p> + +<p>That he was an uneducated man:</p> + +<p>This asserted itself to the eyes and ears.</p> + +<p>After which self-denial, he commenced 'pumping' the artist on various +subjects, assuming an ignorance of things which, to a casual observer, +made him appear like a fool; to a thoughtful person, a knave: the whole +done in order, perhaps, to learn about some trifle which a plain, +straightforward question would have elicited at once. Rocjean saw his +man, and led him a fearful gallop in order to thoroughly examine his +action and style.</p> + +<p>Spite of his commercial life, Mr. Shodd had found time to 'self-educate' +himself—he meant self-instruct—and having a retentive memory, and a +not always strict regard for truth, was looked up to by the +humble-ignorant as a very columbiad in argument, the only fault to be +found with which gun was, that when it was drawn from its quiescent +state into action, its effective force was comparatively nothing, one +half the charge escaping through the large touch-hole of untruth. +Discipline was entirely wanting in Mr. Shodd's composition. A man who +undertakes to be his own teacher rarely punishes his scholar, rarely +checks him with rules and practice, or accustoms him to order and +subordination. Mr. Shodd, therefore, was—undisciplined: a raw recruit, +not a soldier.</p> + +<p>Of course, his conversation was all contradictory. In one breath, on the +self-abnegation principle, he would say, 'I don't know any thing about +paintings;' in the next breath, his overweening egotism would make him +loudly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> proclaim: 'There never was but one painter in this world, and +his name is Hockskins; he lives in my town, and he knows more than any +of your 'old masters'! <i>I</i> ought to know!' Or, '<i>I</i> am an uneducated +man,' meaning uninstructed; immediately following it with the assertion: +'All teachers, scholars, and colleges are useless folly, and all +education is worthless, except self-education.'</p> + +<p>Unfortunately, self-education is too often only education of self!</p> + +<p>After carefully examining all Rocjean's pictures, he settled his +attention on a sunset view over the Campagna, leaving Mrs. Shodd to talk +with our artist. You have seen—all have seen—more than one Mrs. Shodd; +by nature and innate refinement, ladies; (the 'Little Dorrits' Dickens +shows to his beloved countrymen, to prove to them that not all nobility +is nobly born—a very mild lesson, which they refuse to regard;) Mrs. +Shodds who, married to Mr. Shodds, pass a life of silent protest against +brutal words and boorish actions. With but few opportunities to add +acquirable graces to natural ease and self-possession, there was that in +her kindly tone of voice and gentle manner winning the heart of a +gentleman to respect her as he would his mother. It was her mission to +atone for her husband's sins, and she fulfilled her duty; more could not +be asked of her, for his sins were many. The daughter was a copy of the +father, in crinoline; taking to affectation—which is vulgarity in its +most offensive form—as a duck takes to water. Even her dress was +marked, not by that neatness which shows refinement, but by precision, +which in dress is vulgar. One glance, and you saw the woman who in +another age would have thrown her glove to the tiger for her lover to +pick up!</p> + +<p>Among Rocjean's paintings was the portrait of a very beautiful woman, +made by him years before, when he first became an artist, and long +before he had been induced to abandon portrait-painting for landscape. +It was never shown to studio-visitors, and was placed with its face +against the wall, behind other paintings. In moving one of these to +place it in a good light on the easel, it fell with the others to the +floor, face uppermost; and while Rocjean, with a painting in his hands, +could not stoop at once to replace it, Miss Shodd's sharp eyes +discovered the beautiful face, and, her curiosity being excited, nothing +would do but it must be placed on the easel. Unwilling to refuse a +request from the daughter of a Patron of Art in perspective, Rocjean +complied, and, when the portrait was placed, glancing toward Mrs. Shodd, +had the satisfaction of reading in her eyes true admiration for the +startlingly lovely face looking out so womanly from the canvas.</p> + +<p>'Hm!' said Shodd the father, 'quite a fancy head.'</p> + +<p>'Oh! it is an exact portrait of Julia Ting; if she had sat for her +likeness, it couldn't have been better. I must have the painting, pa, +for Julia's sake. I <i>must</i>. It's a naughty word, isn't it, Mr. Rocjean? +but it is so expressive!'</p> + +<p>'Unfortunately, the portrait is not for sale; I placed it on the easel +only in order not to refuse your request.'</p> + +<p>Mr. Shodd saw the road open to an argument. He was in ecstasy; a long +argument—an argument full of churlish flings and boorish slurs, which +he fondly believed passed for polished satire and keen irony. He did not +know Rocjean; he never could know a man like him; he never could learn +the truth that confidence will overpower strength; only at last, when +through his hide and bristles entered the flashing steel, did he, +tottering backwards, open his eyes to the fact that he had found his +master—that, too, in a poor devil of an artist.</p> + +<p>The landscapes were all thrown aside; Shodd must have that portrait. His +daughter had set her heart on having it, he said, and could a gentleman +refuse a lady any thing?</p> + +<p>'It is on this very account I refuse to part with it,' answered Rocjean.</p> + +<p>It instantly penetrated Shodd's head that all this refusal was only +design on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> the part of the artist, to obtain a higher price for the work +than he could otherwise hope for; and so, with what he believed was a +master-stroke of policy, he at once ceased importuning the artist, and +shortly departed from the studio, preceding his wife with his daughter +on his arm, leaving the consoler, and by all means his best half, to +atone, by a few kind words at parting with the artist, for her husband's +sins.</p> + +<p>'And there,' thought Rocjean, as the door closed, 'goes 'a patron of +art'—and by no means the worst pattern. I hope he will meet with +Chapin, and buy an Orphan and an Enterprise statue; once in his house, +they will prove to every observant man the owner's taste.'</p> + +<p>Mr. Shodd, having a point to gain, went about it with elephantine grace +and dexterity. The portrait he had seen at Rocjean's studio he was +determined to have. He invited the artist to dine with him—the artist +sent his regrets; to accompany him, 'with the ladies,' in his carriage +to Tivoli—the artist politely declined the invitation; to a +<i>conversazione</i>, the invitation from Mrs. Shodd—a previous engagement +prevented the artist's acceptance.</p> + +<p>Mr. Shodd changed his tactics. He discovered at his banker's one day a +keen, communicative, wiry, shrewd, etc., etc., enterprising, etc., 'made +a hundred thousand dollars' sort of a little man, named Briggs, who was +traveling in order to travel, and grumble. Mr. Shodd 'came the ignorant +game' over this Briggs; pumped him, without obtaining any information, +and finally turned the conversation on artists, denouncing the entire +body as a set of the keenest swindlers, and citing the instance of one +he knew who had a painting which he believed it would be impossible for +any man to buy, simply because the artist, knowing that he (Shodd) +wished it, would not set a price on it, so as to have a very high one +offered (!) Mr. Briggs instantly was deeply interested. Here was a +chance for him to display before Shodd of Shoddsville his shrewdness, +keenness, and so forth. He volunteered to buy the painting.</p> + +<p>In Rome, an artist's studio may be his castle, or it may be an Exchange. +To have it the first, you must affix a notice to your studio-door +announcing that all entrance of visitors to the studio is forbidden +except on, say, 'Monday from twelve A.M. to three P.M. This is the +baronial manner. But the artist who is not wealthy or has not made a +name, must keep an Exchange, and receive all visitors who choose to +come, at almost any hours—model hours excepted. So Briggs, learning +from Shodd, by careful cross-questioning, the artist's name, address, +and a description of the painting, walked there at once, introduced +himself to Rocjean, shook his hand as if it were the handle of a pump +upon which he had serious intentions, and then began examining the +paintings. He looked at them all, but there was no portrait. He asked +Rocjean if he painted portraits; he found out that he did not. Finally, +he told the artist that he had heard some one say—he did not remember +who—that he had seen a very pretty head in his studio, and asked +Rocjean if he would show it to him.</p> + +<p>'You have seen Mr. Shodd lately, I should think?' said the artist, +looking into the eyes of Mr. Briggs.</p> + +<p>A suggestion of a clean brick-bat passed under a sheet of yellow +tissue-paper was observable in the hard cheeks of Mr. Briggs, that being +the final remnant of all appearance of modesty left in the sharp man, in +the shape of a blush.</p> + +<p>'Oh! yes; every body knows Shodd—man of great talent—generous,' said +Briggs.</p> + +<p>'Mr. Shodd may be very well known,' remarked Rocjean measuredly, 'but +the portrait he saw is not well known; he and his family are the only +ones who have seen it. Perhaps it may save you trouble to know that the +portrait I have several times refused to sell him will never be sold +while I live. The <i>common</i> opinion that an artist, like a Jew, will sell +the old clo' from his back for money, is erroneous.'</p> + +<p>Mr. Briggs shortly after this left the studio, slightly at a discount, +and as if he had been measured, as he said to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> himself; and then and +there determined to say nothing to Shodd about his failing in his +mission to the savage artist. But Shodd found it all out in the first +conversation he made with Briggs; and very bitter were his feelings when +he learnt that a poor devil of an artist dared possess any thing he +could not buy, and moreover had a quiet moral strength which the vulgar +man feared. In his anger, Shodd, with his disregard for truth, commenced +a fearful series of attacks against the artist, regaling every one he +dared to with the coarsest slanders, in the vilest language, against the +painter's character. A very few days sufficed to circulate them, so that +they reached Rocjean's ears; a very few minutes passed before the artist +presented himself to the eyes of Shodd, and, fortunately finding him +alone, told him in four words, 'You are a slanderer;' mentioning to him, +beside, that if he ever uttered another slander against his name, he +should compel him to give him instantaneous satisfaction, and that, as +an American, Shodd knew what that meant.</p> + +<p>It is needless to say that a liar and slanderer is a coward; +consequently Mr. Shodd, with the consequences before his eyes, never +again alluded to Rocjean, and shortly left the city for Naples, to +bestow the light of his countenance there in his great character of Art +Patron.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>'It is a heart-touching face,' said Caper, as one morning, while hauling +over his paintings, Rocjean brought the portrait to light which the +cunning Shodd had so longed to possess for cupidity's sake.</p> + +<p>'I should feel as if I had thrown Psyche to the Gnomes to be torn to +pieces, if I had given such a face to Shodd. If I had sold it to him, I +should have been degraded; for the women loved by man should be kept +sacred in memory. She was a girl I knew in Prague, and, I think, with +six or eight exceptions, the loveliest one I ever met. Some night, at +sunset, I shall walk over the old bridge, and meet her as we parted; +<i>apropos</i> of which meeting, I once wrote some words. Hand me that +portfolio, will you? Thank you. Oh! yes; here they are. Now, read them, +Caper; out with them!</p> + + +<h4><a name="ANEZKA" id="ANEZKA"></a>ANEZKA OD PRAHA.</h4> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Years, weary years, since on the Moldau bridge,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By the five stars and cross of Nepomuk,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I kissed the scarlet sunset from her lips:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Anezka, fair Bohemian, thou wert there!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Dark waves beneath the bridge were running fast,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In haste to bathe the shining rocks, whence rose<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Tier over tier, the gloaming domes and spires,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Turrets and minarets of the Holy City,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Its crown the Hradschin of Bohemia's kings.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O'er Wysscherad we saw the great stars shine;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We felt the night-wind on the rushing stream;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We drank the air as if 'twere Melnick wine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And every draught whirled us still nearer Nebe:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Anezka, fair Bohemian, thou wert there!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Why ever gleam thy black eyes sadly on me?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Why ever rings thy sweet voice in my ear?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Why looks thy pale face from the drifting foam—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dashed by the wild sea on this distant shore—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or from the white clouds does it beckon me?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">My own heart answers: On the Moldau bridge,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Anezka, we will meet to part no more.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span></div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="ANTHONY_TROLLOPE_ON_AMERICA" id="ANTHONY_TROLLOPE_ON_AMERICA"></a>ANTHONY TROLLOPE ON AMERICA.</h2> + + +<p>Mr. Anthony Trollope's work entitled <i>North-America</i> has been +republished in this country, and curiosity has at length been satisfied. +Great as has been this curiosity among his friends, it can not, however, +be said to have been wide-spread, inasmuch as up to the appearance of +this book of travels, comparatively few were aware of the presence of +Mr. Trollope in this country. When Charles Dickens visited America, our +people testified their admiration of his homely genius by going mad, +receiving him with frantic acclamations of delight, dining him, and +suppering him, and going through the 'pump-handle movement' with him. +Mr. Dickens was, in consequence, intensely bored by this attestation of +popular idolatry so peculiar to the United States, and looked upon us as +officious, absurd, and disgusting. Officious we were, and absurd enough, +surely, but far from being disgusting. He ought hardly to beget disgust +whose youth and inexperience leads him to extravagance in his kindly +demonstrations toward genius. However, Mr. Dickens went home rather more +impressed by our faults, which he had had every opportunity of +inspecting, than by our virtues, which possessed fewer salient features +to his humorous eye. Two books—<i>American Notes</i> and <i>Martin +Chuzzlewit</i>—were the product of his tour through America. Thereupon, +the American people grew very indignant. Their Dickens-love, in +proportion to its intensity, turned to Dickens-hate, and ingratitude was +considered to be synonymous with the name of this novelist. We gave him +every chance to see our follies, and we snubbed his cherished and chief +object in visiting America, concerning a copyright. There is little +wonder, then, that Dickens, an Englishman and a caricaturist, should +have painted us in the colors that he did. There is scarcely less wonder +that Americans, at that time, all in the white-heat of enthusiasm, +should have waxed angry at Dickens' cold return to so much warmth. But, +reading these books in the light of 1862, there are few of us who do not +smile at the rage of our elders. We see an uproariously funny +extravaganza in <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>, which we can well afford to laugh +at, having grown thicker-skinned, and wonder what there is to be found +in the <i>Notes</i> so very abominable to an American. Mr. Dickens was a +humorist, not a statesman or philosopher, therefore he wrote of us as a +disappointed humorist would have been tempted to write.</p> + +<p>It is not likely that Mr. Trollope's advent in this country would have +given rise to any remark or excitement, his novels, clever though they +be, not having taken hold of the people's heart as did those of Dickens. +He came among us quietly; the newspapers gave him no flourish of +trumpets; he traveled about unknown; hence it was, that few knew a new +book was to be written upon America by one bearing a name not +over-popular thirty years ago. Curiosity was confined to the friends and +acquaintances of Mr. Trollope, who were naturally not a little anxious +that he should conscientiously write such a book as would remove the +existing prejudice to the name of Trollope, and render him personally as +popular as his novels. For there are, we believe, few intelligent +Americans (and Mr. Trollope is good enough to say that we of the North +are all intelligent) who are not ready to '<i>faire l'aimable</i>' to the +kindly, genial author of <i>North-America</i>. It is not being rash to state +that Mr. Trollope, in his last book, has not disappointed his warmest +personal friends in this country, and this is saying much, when it is +considered that many of them are radically opposed to him in many of +his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> opinions, and most of them hold very different views from him in +regard to the present war. They are not disappointed, because Mr. +Trollope has <i>labored</i> to be impartial in his criticisms. He has, at +least, <i>endeavored</i> to lay aside his English prejudices and judge us in +a spirit of truth and good-fellowship. Mr. Trollope inaugurated a new +era in British book-making upon America, when he wrote: 'If I could in +any small degree add to the good feeling which should exist between two +nations which ought to love each other so well, and which do hang upon +each other so constantly, I should think that I had cause to be proud of +my work.' In saying this much, Mr. Trollope has said what others of his +ilk—Bulwer, Thackeray, and Dickens—would <i>not</i> have said, and he may +well be proud, or, at least, he can afford <i>not</i> to be proud, of a +superior honesty and frankness. He has won for himself kind thoughts on +this side of the Atlantic, and were Americans convinced that the body +English were imbued with the spirit of Mr. Trollope, there would be +little left of the resuscitated 'soreness.'</p> + +<p>In his introduction, Mr. Trollope frankly acknowledges that 'it is very +hard to write about any country a book that does not represent the +country described in a more or less ridiculous point of view.' He +confesses that he is not a philosophico-political or +politico-statistical or a statistico-scientific writer, and hence, +'ridicule and censure run glibly from the pen, and form themselves into +sharp paragraphs, which are pleasant to the reader. Whereas, eulogy is +commonly dull, and too frequently sounds as though it were false.' We +agree with him, that 'there is much difficulty in expressing a verdict +which is intended to be favorable, but which, though favorable, shall +not be falsely eulogistic, and though true, not offensive.' Mr. Trollope +has not been offensive either in his praise or dispraise; and when we +look upon him in the light in which he paints himself—that of an +English novelist—he has, at least, done his best by us. We could not +expect from him such a book as Emerson wrote on <i>English Traits</i>, or +such an one as Thomas Buckle would have written had death not staid his +great work of <i>Civilization</i>. Nor could we look to him for that which +John Stuart Mill—the English De Tocqueville—alone can give. For much +that we expected we have received, for that which is wanting we shall +now find fault, but good-naturedly, we hope.</p> + +<p>Our first ground of complaint against Mr. Trollope's <i>North-America</i>, is +its extreme verbosity. Had it been condensed to one half, or at least +one third of its present size, the spirit of the book had been less +weakened, and the taste of the public better satisfied. The question +naturally arises in an inquiring mind, if the author could make so much +out of a six months' tour through the Northern States, what would the +consequences have been had he remained a year, and visited Dixie's land +as well? The conclusions logically arrived at are, to say the least, +very unfavorable to weak-eyed persons who are condemned to read the +cheap American edition. Life is too short, and books are too numerous, +to allow of repetition; and at no time is Mr. Trollope so guilty in this +respect as when he dilates upon those worthies, Mason and Slidell, in +connection with the Trent affair. It was very natural, especially as +England has come off first-best in this matter, that Mr. Trollope should +have made a feature of the Trent in reporting the state of the American +pulse thereon. One reference to the controversy was desirable, two +endurable, but the third return to the charge is likely to meet with +impatient exclamations from the reader, who heartily sympathizes with +the author when he says: 'And now, I trust, I may finish my book without +again naming Messrs. Slidell and Mason.'</p> + +<p>It certainly was rash to rave as we did on this subject, but it was +quite natural, when our jurists, (even the Hon. Caleb Cushing) who were +supposed to know their business, assured us that we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> had right on our +side. It was extremely ridiculous to put Captain Wilkes upon a pedestal +a little lower than Bunker-Hill monument, and present him with a hero's +sword for doing what was then considered <i>only</i> his duty. But it must be +remembered that at that time the mere performance of duty by a public +officer was so extraordinary a phenomenon that loyal people were brought +to believe it merited especial recognition. Our Government, and not the +people, were to blame. Had the speech of Charles Sumner, delivered on +his 'field-day,' been the verdict of the Washington Cabinet <i>previous</i> +to the reception of England's expostulations, the position taken by +America on this subject would have been highly dignified and honorable. +As it is, we stand with feathers ruffled and torn. But if, as we +suppose, the Trent imbroglio leads to a purification of maritime law, +not only America, but the entire commercial world will be greatly +indebted to the super-patriotism of Captain Wilkes.</p> + +<p>'The charming women of Boston' are inclined to quarrel with their friend +Mr. Trollope, for ridiculing their powers of argumentation <i>apropos</i> to +Captain Wilkes, for Mr. Trollope must confess they knew quite as much +about what they were talking as the lawyers by whom they were +instructed. They have had more than their proper share of revenge, +however, meted out for them by the reviewer of the London <i>Critic</i>, who +writes as follows:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>'Mr. Trollope was in Boston when the first news about the Trent +arrived. Of course, every body was full of the subject at once—Mr. +Trollope, we presume, not excluded—albeit he is rather sarcastic +upon the young ladies who began immediately to chatter about it. +'Wheaton is quite clear about it,' said one young girl to me. It +was the first I had heard of Wheaton, and so far was obliged to +knock under.' Yet Mr. Trollope, knowing very little more of Wheaton +than he did before, and obviously nothing of the great authorities +on maritime law, inflicts upon his readers page after page of +argument upon the Trent affair, not half so delightful as the +pretty babble of the ball-room belle. With all due respect to Mr. +Trollope, and his attractions, we are quite sure that we would much +sooner get our international law from the lips of the fair +Bostonian than from <i>his</i>.'</p></div> + +<p>After such a champion as this, could the fair Bostonians have the heart +to assail Mr. Trollope?</p> + +<p>Mr. Trollope treats of our civil war at great length; in fact, the +reverberations of himself on this matter are quite as objectionable as +those in the Trent affair. But it is his treatment of this subject that +must ever be a source of regret to the earnest thinkers who are +gradually becoming the masters of our Government's policy, who +constitute the bone and muscle of the land, the rank and file of the +army, and who are changing the original character of the war into that +of a holy crusade. It is to be deplored, because Mr. Trollope's book +will no doubt influence English opinion, to a certain extent, and +therefore militate against us, and we already know how his mistaken +opinions have been seized upon by pro-slavery journals in this country +as a <i>bonne bouche</i> which they rarely obtain from so respectable a +source; the more palatable to them, coming from that nationality which +we have always been taught to believe was more abolition in its creed +than William Lloyd Garrison himself, and from whose people we have +received most of our lectures on the sin of slavery. It is sad that so +fine a nature as that of Mr. Trollope should not feel +conscience-stricken in believing that 'to mix up the question of general +abolition with this war must be the work of a man too ignorant to +understand the real subject of the war, or too false to his country to +regard it.' Yet it is strange that these 'too ignorant' or 'too false' +men are the very ones that Mr. Trollope holds up to admiration, and +declares that any nation might be proud to claim their genius. +Longfellow and Lowell, Emerson and Motley, to whom we could add almost +all the well-known thinkers of the country, men after his own heart in +most things, belong to this 'ignorant' or 'false' sect. Is it their one +madness?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> That is a strange madness which besets our <i>greatest</i> men and +women; a marvelous anomaly surely. Yet there must be something +sympathetic in abolitionism to Mr. Trollope, for he prefers Boston, the +centre of this ignorance, to all other American cities, and finds his +friends for the most part among these false ones, by which we are to +conclude that Mr. Trollope is by nature an abolitionist, but that +circumstances have been unfavorable to his proper development. And these +circumstances we ascribe to a hasty and superficial visit to the British +West-India colonies.</p> + +<p>It is well known that in his entertaining book on travels in the +West-Indies and Spanish Main, Mr. Trollope undertakes to prove that +emancipation has both ruined the commercial prosperity of the British +islands and degraded the free blacks to a level with the idle brute. Mr. +Trollope is still firm in this opinion, notwithstanding the statistics +of the Blue Book, which prove that these colonies never were in so +flourishing a condition as at present. We, in America, have also had the +same fact demonstrated by figures, in that very plainly written book +called the <i>Ordeal of Free Labor</i>. Mr. Trollope, no doubt, saw some very +lazy negroes, wallowing in dirt, and living only for the day, but later +developments have proved that his investigations could have been simply +those of a dilettante. It is highly probable that the planters who have +been shorn of their riches by the edict of Emancipation, should paint +the present condition of the blacks in any thing but rose-colors, and +we, of course, believe that Mr. Trollope <i>believes</i> what he has written. +He is none the less mistaken, if we are to pin our faith to the Blue +Book, which we are told never lies. And yet, believing that emancipation +has made a greater brute than ever of the negro, Mr. Trollope rejoices +in the course which has been pursued by the home government. If both +white man and black man are worse off than they were before, what good +could have been derived from the reform, and by what right ought he to +rejoice? Mr. Trollope claims to be an anti-slavery man, but we must +confess that to our way of arguing, the ground he stands upon in this +matter is any thing but <i>terra firma</i>. Mr. Trollope was probably +thinking of those dirty West-India negroes when he made the following +comments upon a lecture delivered by Wendell Phillips:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>'I have sometimes thought that there is no being so venomous, so +bloodthirsty, as a professed philanthropist; and that when the +philanthropist's ardor lies negro-ward, it then assumes the deepest +die of venom and bloodthirstiness. There are four millions of +slaves in the Southern States, none of whom have any capacity for +self-maintenance or self-control. Four millions of slaves, with the +necessities of children, with the passions of men, and the +ignorance of savages! And Mr. Phillips would emancipate these at a +blow; would, were it possible for him to do so, set them loose upon +the soil to tear their masters, destroy each other, and make such a +hell upon earth as has never even yet come from the uncontrolled +passions and unsatisfied wants of men.'</p></div> + +<p>Mr. Trollope should have thought twice before he wrote thus of the +American negro. Were he a competent authority on this subject, his +opinion might be worth something; but as he never traveled in the South, +and as his knowledge of the negro is limited to a surface acquaintance +with the West-Indies, we maintain that Mr. Trollope has not only been +unjust, but ungenerous. Four millions of slaves, none of whom have any +capacity for self-maintenance or self-control! Whom are we to believe? +Mr. Trollope, who has never been on a Southern plantation, or Frederick +Law Olmsted? Mr. Pierce, who has been superintendent of the contrabands +at Fortress Monroe and at Hilton Head, officers attached to Burnside's +Division, and last and best, General David Hunter, an officer of the +regular army, who went to South-Carolina with anti-abolition +antecedents? All honor to General Hunter, who, unlike many others, has +not shut his eyes upon facts, and, like a rational being, has yielded to +the logic of events. It is strange that these authorities, all of whom +possess the confi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>dence of the Government, should disagree with Mr. +Trollope. <i>None</i> self-maintaining? Robert Small is a pure negro. Is he +not more than self-maintaining? Has he not done more for the Federal +Government than any white man of the Gulf States? Tillman is a negro; +the best pilots of the South are negroes: are <i>they</i> not +self-maintaining? Kansas has welcomed thousands of fugitive slaves to +her hospitable doors, not as paupers, but as laborers, who have taken +the place of those white men who have gone to fight the battles which +they also should be allowed to take part in. The women have been gladly +accepted as house-servants. Does not this look like self-maintenance? +Would negroes be employed in the army if they were as Mr. Trollope +pictures them? He confesses that without these four millions of slaves +the South would be a wilderness, therefore they <i>do</i> work as slaves to +the music of the slave-drivers' whip. How very odd, that the moment men +and women (for Mr. Trollope does acknowledge them to be such) <i>own +themselves</i>, and are paid for the sweat of their brow, they should +forget the trades by which they have enriched the South, and become +incapable of maintaining themselves—they who have maintained three +hundred and fifty thousand insolent slave-owners! Given whip-lashes and +the incubus of a white family, the slave <i>will</i> work; given freedom and +wages, the negro <i>won't</i> work. Was there ever stated a more palpable +fallacy? Is it necessary to declare further that the Hilton Head +experiment is a success, although the negroes, wanting in slave-drivers +and in their musical instruments, began their planting very late in the +season? Is it necessary to give Mr. Trollope one of many figures, and +prove that in the British West-India colonies free labor has exported +two hundred and sixty-five millions pounds of sugar annually, whereas +slave labor only exported one hundred and eighty-seven millions three +hundred thousand? And this in a climate where, unlike even the Southern +States of North-America, there is every inducement to indolence.</p> + +<p>Four millions of slaves, <i>none</i> of whom are capable of self-control, who +possess the necessities of children, the passions of men, and the +ignorance of savages! We really have thought that the many thousands of +these four millions who have come under the Federal jurisdiction, +exercised considerable self-control, when it is remembered that in some +localities they have been left entire masters of themselves, have in +other instances labored months for the Government under promise of pay, +and have had that pay prove a delusion. Certainly it is fair to judge of +a whole by a part. Given a bone, Professor Agassiz can draw the animal +of which the bone forms a part. Given many thousands of negroes, we +should be able to judge somewhat of four millions. Had Mr. Trollope seen +the thousands of octoroons and quadroons enslaved in the South by their +<i>own fathers</i>, it would have been more just in him to have attributed a +want of <i>self-control</i> to the <i>masters</i> of these four millions. We do +not know what Mr. Trollope means by 'the necessities of children. +Children need to be sheltered, fed, and clothed, and so do the negroes, +but here the resemblance ends; for whereas children can not take care of +themselves, the negro <i>can</i>, provided there is any opportunity to work. +It is scarcely to be doubted that temporary distress must arise among +fugitives in localities where labor is not plenty; but does this +establish the black man's incapacity? Revolutions, especially those +which are internal, generally bring in their train distress to laborers. +Then we are told that the slaves are endowed with the passions of men; +and very glad are we to know this, for, as a love of liberty and a +willingness to sacrifice all things for freedom, is one of the loftiest +passions in men, were he devoid of this passion, we should look with +much less confidence to assistance from the negro in this war of freedom +<i>versus</i> slavery, than we do at present. In stating that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> the slaves are +as ignorant as savages, Mr. Trollope pays an exceedingly poor compliment +to the Southern whites, as it would naturally be supposed that constant +contact with a superior race would have civilized the negro to a +<i>certain</i> extent, especially as he is known to be wonderfully imitative. +And such is the case; at least the writer of these lines, who has been +born and bred in a slave State, thinks so. As a whole, they compare very +favorably with the 'poor white trash,' and individually they are vastly +superior to this 'trash.' It is true, that they can not read or write, +not from want of aptitude or desire, as the teachers among the +contrabands write that their desire to read amounts to a passion, in +many cases, even among the hoary-headed, but because the teaching of a +slave to read or write was, in the good old times before the war, +regarded and punished as a criminal offense. What a pity it is that we +can not go back to the Union <i>as it was!</i> In this ignorance of the +rudiments of learning, the negroes are not unlike a large percentage of +the populations of Great Britain and Ireland.</p> + +<p>'And Mr. Phillips would let these ignorant savages loose upon the soil +to tear their masters, destroy each other, and make such a hell upon +earth as has never even yet come from the uncontrolled passions and +unsatisfied wants of men!' If Mr. Trollope were read in the history of +emancipation, he would know that there has not been an instance of 'such +a hell upon earth' as he describes. The American negro is a singularly +docile, affectionate, and good-natured creature, not at all given to +destroying his kind or tearing his master, and the least inclined to do +these things at a time when there is no necessity for them. A slave is +likely to kill his master to gain his freedom, but he is not fond enough +of murder to kill him when no object is to be gained except a halter. +The record so far proves that the masters have shot down their slaves +rather than have them fall into the hands of the Union troops. Even +granting Mr. Trollope's theory of the negro disposition, no edict of +emancipation could produce such an effect as he predicts, to the +<i>masters</i>, at least. They, in revenge, might shoot down their slaves, +but, unfortunately, the victims would be unable to defend themselves, +from the fact that all arms are sedulously kept from them. The slaves +would run away in greater numbers than they do at present, would give us +valuable information of the enemy, and would swell our ranks as +soldiers, if permitted, and kill their rebel masters in the legal and +honorable way of war. It is likely that Mr. Trollope, holding the black +man in so little estimation, would doubt his abilities in this capacity. +Fortunately for us, we can quote as evidence in our favor from General +Hunter's late letter to Congress, which, for sagacity and elegant +sarcasm, is unrivaled among American state papers. General Hunter, after +stating that the 'loyal slaves, unlike their fugitive masters, welcome +him, aid him, and supply him with food, labor, and information, working +with remarkable industry,' concludes by stating that 'the experiment of +arming the blacks, so far as I have made it, has been a complete and +even marvelous success. They are sober, docile, attentive, and +enthusiastic, <i>displaying great natural capacity for acquiring the +duties of the soldier</i>. They are eager beyond all things to take the +field and be led into action, and it is the <i>unanimous opinion</i> of the +officers who have had charge of them, that in the peculiarities of this +climate and country, they will prove invaluable auxiliaries, fully equal +to the similar regiments so long and successfully used by the British +authorities in the West-India Islands. In conclusion, I would say that +it is my hope, there appearing no possibility of other reinforcements, +owing to the exigencies of the campaign on the peninsula, to have +organized by the end of next fall, and to be able to present to the +Government, from forty-eight to fifty thousand of these hardy and +devoted soldiers.'</p> + +<p>Mr. Trollope declares that without the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> slaves the South would be a +wilderness; he also says that the North is justified in the present war +against the South, and although he doubts our ability to attain our ends +in this war, he would be very glad if we were victorious. If these are +his opinions, and if further, he considers slavery to be the cause of +the war, then why in the name of common-sense does he not advocate that +which would bring about our lasting success? He expresses his +satisfaction at the probability of emancipation in Missouri, Kentucky, +and Virginia, and yet rather than that abolition should triumph +universally, he would have the Gulf States go off by themselves and sink +into worse than South-American insignificance, a curse to themselves +from the very reason of slavery. This, to our way of thinking, is vastly +more cruel to the South than even the 'hell upon earth,' which, +supposing it were possible, emancipation would create. A massacre could +affect but one generation: such a state of things as Mr. Trollope +expects to see would poison numberless generations. The Northern brain +is gradually ridding itself of mental fog, begotten by Southern +influences, and Mr. Trollope will not live to see the Gulf States sink +into a moral Dismal Swamp. The day is not far distant when a God-fearing +and justice-loving people will give these States their choice between +Emancipation and death in their 'last ditch,' which we suppose to be the +Gulf of Mexico. Repulses before Richmond only hasten this end. 'But +Congress can not do this,' says Mr. Trollope. Has martial law no virtue? +We object to the title, 'An Apology for the War,' which Mr. Trollope has +given to one of his chapters; and with the best of motives, he takes +great pains to prove to the English public how we of the North could not +but fight the South, however losing a game it might be. No true American +need beg pardon of Europe for this war, which is the only apology we can +make to civilization for slavery. Mr. Trollope states the worn-out cant +that the secessionists of the South have been aided and abetted by the +fanatical abolitionism of the North. Of course they have: had there been +no slavery, there would have been no abolitionists, and therefore no +secessionists. Wherever there is a wrong, there are always persons +fanatical enough to cry out against that wrong. In time, the few +fanatics become the majority, and conquer the wrong, to the infinite +disgust of the easy-going present, but to the gratitude of a better +future. The Abolitionists gave birth to the Republican party, and of +course the triumph of the Republican party was the father to secession; +but we see no reason to mourn that it was so; rather do we thank God +that the struggle has come in our day. We can not sympathize with Mr. +Trollope when he says of the Bell and Everett party: 'Their express +theory was this: that the question of slavery should not be touched. +Their purpose was to crush agitation, and restore harmony by an +impartial balance between the North and South: a fine purpose—the +finest of all purposes, had it been practicable.' We suppose by this, +that Mr. Trollope wishes such a state of things had been practicable. +The impartial balance means the Crittenden Compromise, whose +impartiality the North fails to see in any other light than a fond +leaning to the South, giving it all territory South of a certain +latitude, a <i>latitude</i> that never was intended by the Constitution. It +seems to us that there can be no impartial balance between freedom and +slavery. Every jury must be partial to the right, or they sin before +God.</p> + +<p>Mr. Trollope tells us that 'the South is seceding from the North because +the two are not homogeneous. They have different instincts, different +appetites, different morals, and a different culture. It is well for one +man to say that slavery has caused the separation, and for another to +say that slavery has not caused it. Each in so saying speaks the truth. +Slavery has caused it, seeing that slavery is the great point on which +the two have agreed to differ. But slavery has not caused it, seeing +that other points of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> difference are to be found In every circumstance +and feature of the two people. The North and the South must ever be +dissimilar. In the North, labor will always be honorable, and because +honorable, successful. In the South, labor has ever been servile—at +least in some sense—and therefore dishonorable; and because +dishonorable, has not, to itself, been successful.' Is not this arguing +in a circle? The North is dissimilar to the South. Why? Because labor is +honorable in the former, and dishonorable, because of its servility, in +the latter. The servility removed, in what are the two dissimilar? One +third of the Southern whites are related by marriage to the North; a +second third are Northerners, and it is this last third that are most +violent in their acts against and hatred of the North. They were born +with our instincts and appetites, educated in the same morals, and +received the same culture; and these men are no worse than some of their +brothers who, though they have not emigrated to the South, have yet +fattened upon cotton. The parents of Jefferson Davis belonged to +Connecticut; Slidell is a New-Yorker; Benjamin is a Northerner; General +Lovell is a disgrace to Massachusetts; so, too, is Albert Pike. It is +utter nonsense to say that we are two people. Two interests have been at +work—free labor and slave labor; and when the former triumphs, there +will be no more straws split about two people, nor will the refrain of +agriculture <i>versus</i> manufacture be sung. The South, especially +Virginia, has untold wealth to be drained from her great water-power. +New-England will not be alone in manufacturing, nor Pennsylvania in +mining.</p> + +<p>We think that Mr. Trollope fails to appreciate principle when he likens +the conflict between the two sections of our country to a quarrel +between Mr. and Mrs. Jones, in which a mutual friend (England) is, from +the very nature of the case, obliged to maintain neutrality, leaving the +matter to the tender care of Sir Creswell. There never yet existed a +mutual friend who, however little he interfered with a matrimonial +difference, did not, in sympathy and moral support, take violent sides +with <i>one</i> of the combatants; and Mr. Trollope would be first in taking +up the cudgels against private wrong. The North has never wished for +physical aid from England; but does Mr. Trollope remember what Mrs. +Browning has so nobly and humanely written? 'Non-intervention in the +affairs of neighboring States is a high political virtue; but +non-intervention does not mean passing by on the other side when your +neighbor falls among thieves, or Phariseeism would recover it from +Christianity.' England, the greatest of actual nations, had a part to +act in our war, and that part a noble one. Not the part of physical +intervention for the benefit of Lancashire and of a confederacy founded +upon slavery, which both Earl Russell and Lord Palmerston inform the +world will not take place 'at present.' Not the part of hypercriticism +and misconstruction of Northern 'Orders,' and affectionate blindness to +Southern atrocities. But such a part as was worthy of the nation, one of +whose greatest glories is that it gave birth to a Clarkson, a Sharpe, +and a Wilberforce. And England has much to answer for, in that she has +been found wanting, not in the cause of the North, but in the cause of +humanity. Had she not always told us that we were criminals of the +deepest dye not to do what she had done in the West-Indies, had she not +always held out to the world the beacon-light of emancipation, there +could be little censure cast upon the British ermine; but having laid +claim to so white and moral a robe, she subjects herself to the very +proper indignation of the anti-slavery party which now governs the +North.</p> + +<p>Mr. Trollope confesses that British sympathy is with the South, and +further writes: 'It seems to me that some of us never tire in abusing +the Americans and calling them names, for having allowed themselves to +be driven into this civil war. We tell them that they are fools and +idiots; we speak of their doings as though there had been some plain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> +course by which the war might have been avoided; and we throw it in +their teeth that they have no capability for war,' etc., etc. Contact +with the English abroad sent us home convinced of English animosity, and +this was before the Trent affair. A literary woman writes to America: +'There is only one person to whom I can talk freely upon the affairs of +your country. Here in England, they say I have lived so long <i>in Italy +that I have become an American</i>.' We have had nothing but abuse from the +English press always, excepting a few of the liberal journals. Mill and +Bright and Cobden alone have been prominent in their expression of +good-will to the North. And this is Abolition England! History will +record, that at the time when America was convulsed by the inevitable +struggle between Freedom and Slavery, England, actuated by selfish +motives, withheld that moral support and righteous counsel which would +have deprived the South of much aid and comfort, brought the war to a +speedier conclusion, gained the grateful confidence of the anti-slavery +North, and immeasurably aided the abolition of human slavery.</p> + +<p>It may be said that we of the North have no intention of touching the +'institution,' and therefore England can not sympathize with us. +Whatever the theory of the administration at Washington may have been, +he is insane as well as blind who does not see what is its practical +tendency. In the same length of time, this tendency would have been much +farther on the road to right had the strong arm of England wielded the +moral power which should belong to it. Mr. Trollope says: 'The complaint +of Americans is, that they have received no sympathy from England; but +it seems to me that a great nation should not require an expression of +sympathy during its struggle. Sympathy is for the weak, not for the +strong. When I hear two powerful men contending together in argument, I +do not sympathize with him who has the best of it; but I watch the +precision of his logic, and acknowledge the effects of his rhetoric. +There has been a whining weakness in the complaints made by Americans +against England, which has done more to lower them, as a people, in my +judgment, than any other part of their conduct during the present +crisis.' It is true that at the beginning of this war the North <i>did</i> +show a whining weakness for English approbation, of which it is +sincerely to be hoped we have been thoroughly cured. We paid our +mother-land too high a compliment—we gave her credit for virtues which +she does not possess—and the disappointment incurred thereby has been +bitter in the extreme. We were not aware, however, that a sincere desire +for sympathy was an American peculiarity. We have long labored under the +delusion that the English, even, were very indignant with Brother +Jonathan during the Crimean war, when he failed to furnish the quota of +sympathy which our cousins considered was their due, but which we could +not give to a debauched 'sick man' whom, for the good of civilization, +we wished out of the world as quickly as possible. But England was +'strong;' why should she have desired sympathy? For, according to Mr. +Trollope's creed, the weak alone ought to receive sympathy. It seems to +be a matter entirely independent of right and wrong with Mr. Trollope. +It is sufficient for a man to prove his case to be '<i>strong</i>,' for Mr. +Trollope to side with his opponent. Demonstrate your weakness, whether +it be physical, moral, or mental, and Mr. Trollope will fight your +battles for you. On this principle—which, we are told, is English—the +exiled princes of Italy, especially the Neapolitan-Bourbon, the Pope, +Austria, and of course the Southern confederacy, should find their +warmest sympathizers among true Britons, and perhaps they do; but Mr. +Trollope, in spite of his theory, is not one of them.</p> + +<p>The emancipationist should <i>not</i> look to England for aid or comfort, but +it will be none the worse for England that she has been false to her +traditions. 'I confess,' wrote Mrs. Browning—dead<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> now a year—'that I +dream of the day when an English statesman shall arise with a heart too +large for England, having courage, in the face of his countrymen, to +assert of some suggested policy: 'This is good for your trade, this is +necessary for your domination; but it will vex a people hard by, it will +hurt a people farther off, it will profit nothing to the general +humanity; therefore, away with it! it is not for you or for me.'' The +justice of the poet yet reigns in heaven only; and dare we dream—we +who, sick at heart, are weighed down by the craft and dishonesty of our +public men—of the possibility of such a golden age?</p> + +<p>On the subject of religion as well, we are much at variance with Mr. +Trollope. Of course, it is to be expected that one who says, 'I love the +name of State and Church, and believe that much of our English +well-being has depended on it; <i>I have made up my mind to think that +union good, and am not to be turned away from that conviction</i>;' it is +to be expected, we repeat, that such an one should consider religion in +the States 'rowdy.' Surely, we will not quarrel with Mr. Trollope for +this opinion, however much we may regret it; as we consider it the glory +of this country, that while we claim for our moral foundation a fervent +belief in <span class="smcap">God</span> and an abiding faith in the necessity of +religion, our government pays no premium to hypocrisy by having fastened +to its shirts one creed above all other creeds, made thereby more +respectable and more fashionable. 'It is a part of their system,' Mr. +Trollope continues, 'that religion shall be perfectly free, and that no +man shall be in any way constrained in that matter,' (and he sees +nothing to thank God for in this system of ours!) 'consequently, the +question of a man's religion is regarded in a free-and-easy manner.' +That which we have gladly dignified by the name of religious toleration, +(not yet half as broad as it should and will be,) Mr. Trollope degrades +by the epithet of 'free-and-easy.' This would better apply were ours the +toleration of indifference, instead of being a toleration founded upon +the unshaken belief that God has endowed every human being with a +conscience whose sufficiency unto itself, in matters of religious faith, +we have no right to question. And we are convinced that this experiment, +with which we started, has been good for our growth of mind and soul, as +well as for our growth as a nation. Even Mr. Trollope qualifies our +'rowdyism,' by saying that 'the nation is religious in its tendencies, +and prone to acknowledge the goodness of God in all things.'</p> + +<p>And now we have done with fault-finding. For all that we hereafter quote +from Mr. Trollope's book, we at once express our thanks and <i>sympathy</i>. +He is '<i>strong</i>,' but he is also human, and likes sympathy.</p> + +<p>More than true, if such a thing could be, is Mr. Trollope's comments +upon American politicians. 'The corruption of the venal politicians of +the nation stinks aloud in the nostrils of all men. It behoves the +country to look to this. It is time now that she should do so. The +people of the nation are educated and clever. The women are bright and +beautiful. Her charity is profuse; her philanthropy is eager and true; +her national ambition is noble and honest—honest in the cause of +civilization. But she has soiled herself with political corruption, and +has disgraced the cause of republican government by those whom she has +placed in her high places. Let her look to it NOW. She is nobly +ambitious of reputation throughout the earth; she desires to be called +good as well as great; to be regarded not only as powerful, but also as +beneficent She is creating an army; she is forging cannon, and preparing +to build impregnable ships of war. But all these will fail to satisfy +her pride, unless she can cleanse herself from that corruption by which +her political democracy has debased itself. A politician should be a man +worthy of all honor, in that he loves his country; and not one worthy of +contempt, in that he robs his country.' Can we plead other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> than guilty, +when even now a Senator of the United States stands convicted of a +miserable betrayal of his office? Will America heed the voice of Europe, +as well as of her best friends at home, before it is too late? Again +writes Mr. Trollope: ''It is better to have little governors than great +governors,' an American said to me once. 'It is our glory that we know +how to live without having great men over us to rule us.' That glory, if +ever it were a glory, has come to an end. It seems to me that all these +troubles have come upon the States because they have not placed high men +in high places.' Is there a thinking American who denies the truth of +this? And of our code of honesty—that for which Englishmen are most to +be commended—what is truly said of us? 'It is not by foreign voices, by +English newspapers, or in French pamphlets, that the corruption of +American politicians has been exposed, but by American voices and by the +American press. It is to be heard on every side. Ministers of the +Cabinet, Senators, Representatives, State Legislatures, officers of the +army, officials of the navy, contractors of every grade—all who are +presumed to touch, or to have the power of touching, public money, are +thus accused.... The leaders of the rebellion are hated in the North. +The names of Jefferson Davis, Cobb, Toombs, and Floyd, are mentioned +with execration by the very children. This has sprung from a true and +noble feeling; from a patriotic love of national greatness, and a hatred +of those who, for small party purposes, have been willing to lessen the +name of the United States. But, in addition to this, the names of those +also should be execrated who have robbed their country when pretending +to serve it; who have taken its wages in the days of its great struggle, +and at the same time have filched from its coffers; who have undertaken +the task of steering the ship through the storm, in order that their +hands might be deep in the meal-tub and the bread-basket, and that they +might stuff their own sacks with the ship's provisions. These are the +men who must be loathed by the nation—whose fate must be held up as a +warning to others—before good can come.' How long are the American +people to allow this pool of iniquity to stagnate, and sap the vitals of +the nation? How long, O Lord! how long?</p> + +<p>On the subject of education, Mr. Trollope—though indulging in a little +pleasantry on young girls who analyze Milton—does us full justice. 'The +one matter in which, as far as my judgment goes, the people of the +United States have excelled us Englishmen, so as to justify them in +taking to themselves praise which we can not take to ourselves or refuse +to them, is the matter of education.... The coachman who drives you, the +man who mends your window, the boy who brings home your purchases, the +girl who stitches your wife's dress—they all carry with them sure signs +of education, and show it in every word they utter.' But much as Mr. +Trollope admires our system of public schools, he does not see much to +extol in the at least Western way of rearing children. 'I must protest +that American babies are an unhappy race. They eat and drink just as +they please; they are never punished; they are never banished, snubbed, +and kept in the background, as children are kept with us; and yet they +are wretched and uncomfortable. My heart has bled for them as I have +heard them squalling, by the hour together, in agonies of discontent and +dyspepsia.' This is the type of child found by Mr. Trollope on Western +steamboats; and we agree with him that beef-steaks, <i>with pickles</i>, +produce a bad type of child; and it is unnecessary to confess to Mr. +Trollope what he already knows, that pertness and irreverence to parents +are the great faults of American youth. No doubt the pickles have much +to do with this state of things.</p> + +<p>While awarding high praise to American women <i>en masse</i>, Mr. Trollope +mourns over the condition of the Western women with whom he came in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> +contact, and we are sorry to think that these specimens form the rule, +though of course exceptions are very numerous. 'A Western American man +is not a talking man. He will sit for hours over a stove, with his cigar +in his mouth and his hat over his eyes, chewing the cud of reflection. A +dozen will sit together in the same way, and there shall not be a dozen +words spoken between them in an hour. With the women, one's chance of +conversation is still worse. 'It seemed as though the cares of this +world had been too much for them.... They were generally hard, dry, and +melancholy. I am speaking, of course, of aged females, from +five-and-twenty, perhaps, to thirty, who had long since given up the +amusements and levities of life.' Mr. Trollope's malediction upon the +women of New-York whom he met in the street-cars, is well merited, so +far as many of them are concerned; but he should bear in mind the fact +that these 'many' are foreigners, mostly uneducated natives of the +British isles. Inexcusable as is the advantage which such women +sometimes take of American gallantry, the spirit of this gallantry is +none the less to be commended, and the grateful smile of thanks from +American ladies is not so rare as Mr. Trollope imagines. Mr. Trollope +wants the gallantry abolished; we hope that rude women may learn a +better appreciation of this gallantry by its abolition in flagrant cases +only. Had Mr. Trollope once 'learned the ways' of New-York stages, he +would not have found them such vile conveyances; but we quite agree with +him in advocating the introduction of cabs. In seeing nothing but +vulgarity in Fifth Avenue, and a thirst for gold all over New-York City, +we think Mr. Trollope has given way to prejudice. There is no city so +generous in the spending of money as New-York. Art and literature find +their best patrons in this much-abused Gotham; and it will not do for +one who lives in a glass house to throw stones, for we are not the only +nation of shop-keepers. We do not blame Mr. Trollope, however, for +giving his love to Boston, and to the men and women of intellect who +have homes in and about Boston.</p> + +<p>We are of opinion that Mr. Trollope is too severe upon our hotels; for +faulty though they be, they are established upon a vastly superior plan +to those of any other country, if we are to believe our own experience +and that of the majority of travelers. Mr. Trollope sees no use of a +ladies' parlor; but Mr. Trollope would soon see its indispensability +were he to travel as an unprotected female of limited means. On the +matter of the Post-Office, however, he has both our ears; and much that +he says of our government, and the need of a constitutional change in +our Constitution, deserves attention—likewise what he says of +colonization. We do elevate unworthy persons to the altar of heroism, +and are stupid in our blatant eulogies. It is sincerely to be regretted +that so honest a writer did not devote two separate chapters to the +important subjects of drunkenness and artificial heat, which, had he +known us better, he would have known were undermining the American +<i>physique</i>. He does treat passingly of our hot-houses, but seems not to +have faced the worse evil. Of our literature, and of our absorption of +English literature, Mr. Trollope has spoken fully and well; and in his +plea for a national copyright, he might have further argued its +necessity, from the fact that American publishers will give no +encouragement to unknown native writers, however clever, so long as they +can steal the brains of Great Britain.</p> + +<p>To conclude. We like Mr. Trollope's book, for we believe him when he +says: 'I have endeavored to judge without prejudice, and to hear with +honest ears, and to see with honest eyes.' We have the firmest faith in +Mr. Trollope's honesty. We know he has written nothing that he does not +conscientiously believe, and he has given unmistakable evidence of his +good-will to this country. We are lost in amazement when he tells us: 'I +know I shall never again be at Boston, and that I have said that about +the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> Americans which would make me unwelcome as a guest if I were +there.' Said what? We should be thin-skinned, indeed, did we take +umbrage at a book written in the spirit of Mr. Trollope's. On the +contrary, the Americans who are interested in it are agreeably +disappointed in the verdict which he has given of them; and though they +may not accept his political opinions, they are sensible enough to +appreciate the right of each man to his honest convictions. Mr. +Trollope, though he sees in our future not two, but three, +confederacies, predicts a great destiny for the North. We can see but a +union of all—a Union cemented by the triumph of freedom in the +abolition of that which has been the taint upon the nation. If Mr. +Trollope's prophecies are fulfilled, (and God forbid!) it will be +because we have allowed the golden hour to escape. Pleased as we are +with Mr. Trollope the writer—who has not failed to appreciate the +self-sacrifice of Northern patriotism—Mr. Trollope the <i>man</i> has a far +greater hold upon our heart; a hold which has been strengthened, rather +than weakened, by his book. The friends of Mr. Trollope extend to him +their cordial greeting, and Boston in particular will offer a hearty +shake of the hand to the writer of <i>North-America</i>, whenever he chooses +to take that hand again.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="UP_AND_ACT" id="UP_AND_ACT"></a>UP AND ACT.</h2> + + +<p>The man who is not convinced, by this time, that the Union has come to +'the bitter need,' must be hard to convince. For more than one year we +have put off doing our <i>utmost</i>, and talked incessantly of the 'wants of +the enemy.' We have demonstrated a thousand times that they wanted +quinine and calomel, beef and brandy, with every other comfort, luxury, +and necessary, and have ended by discovering that they have forced every +man into their army; that they have, at all events, abundance of +corn-meal, raised by the negroes whom Northern Conservatism has dreaded +to free; that they are well supplied with arms from Abolition England, +and that every day finds them more and more warlike and inured to war.</p> + +<p>Time was, we are told, when a bold, 'radical push' would have prevented +all this. Time was, when those who urged such vigorous and overwhelming +measures—and we were among them—were denounced as insane and +traitorous by the Northern Conservative press. Time was, when the +Irishman's policy of capturing a horse in a hundred-acre lot, 'by +surrounding him,' might have been advantageously exchanged for the more +direct course of going <i>at</i> him. Time <i>was</i>, when there were very few +troops in Richmond. All this when time—and very precious time—was.</p> + +<p>Just now, time <i>is</i>—and very little time to lose, either. The rebels, +it seems, can live on corn-meal and whisky as well under tents as they +once did in cabins. They are building rams and 'iron-clads,' and very +good ones. They have an immense army, and three or four millions of +negroes to plant for it and feed it. Hundreds of thousands of acres of +good corn-land are waving in the hot breezes of Dixie. These are facts +of the strongest kind—so strong that we have actually been compelled to +adopt some few of the 'radical and ruinous' measures advocated from the +beginning by 'an insane and fanatical band of traitors,' for whose blood +the New-York <i>Herald</i> and its weakly ape, the Boston <i>Courier</i>, have not +yet ceased to howl or chatter. Negroes, it seems, are, after all, to be +employed sometimes, and all the work is not to be put upon soldiers who, +as the correspondent of the London <i>Times</i> has truly said, have endured +disasters and sufferings caused by unpardonable neglect, such as <i>no</i> +Euro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span>pean troops would have borne without revolt. It is even thought by +some hardy and very desperate 'radicals,' that negroes may be armed and +made to fight for the Union; in fact, it is quite possible that, should +the North succeed in resisting the South a year or two longer, or should +we undergo a few more <i>very</i> great disasters, we may go so far as to +believe what a great French writer has declared in a work on Military +Art, that 'War is war, and he wages it best who injures his enemy most.' +We are aware of the horror which this fanatical radical, and, of course, +Abolitionist axiom, by a writer of the school of Napoleon, must inspire, +and therefore qualify the assertion by the word 'may.' For to believe +that the main props of the enemy are to be knocked away from under them, +and that we are to fairly fight them in <i>every</i> way, involves a +desperate and un-Christian state of mind to which no one should yield, +and which would, in fact, be impious, nay, even un-democratic and +un-conservative.</p> + +<p>It is true that by 'throwing grass' at the enemy, as President Lincoln +quaintly terms it, by the anaconda game, and above all, by constantly +yelling, 'No nigger!' and 'Down with the Abolitionists!' we have +contrived to lose some forty thousand good soldiers' lives by disease; +to stand where we were, and to have myriads of men paralyzed and kept +back from war just at the instant when their zeal was most needed. We +beg our readers to seriously reflect on this last fact. There are +numbers of essential and bold steps in this war, and against the enemy, +which <i>must</i>, in the ordinary course of events, be taken, as for +instance. General Hunter's policy of employing negroes, as General +Jackson did. With such a step, <i>honestly</i> considered, no earthly +politics whatever has any thing to do. Yet every one of these sheer +necessities of war which a Napoleon would have grasped at the <i>first</i>, +have been promptly opposed as radical, traitorous, and infernal, by +those tories who are only waiting for the South to come in again to rush +and lick its hands as of old. Every measure, from the first arming of +troops down to the employment of blacks, has been fought by these +'reactionaries' savagely, step by step—we might add, in parenthesis, +that it has been amusing to see how they 'ate dirt,' took back their +words and praised these very measures, one by one, as soon as they saw +them taken up by the Administration. The <i>ecco la fica</i> of Italian +history was a small humiliation to that which the 'democratic' press +presented when it glorified Lincoln's 'remuneration message,' and gilded +the pill by declaring it (Heaven knows how!) a splendid triumph over +Abolition—that same remuneration doctrine which, when urged in the +New-York <i>Tribune</i>, and in these pages, had been reviled as fearfully +'abolition!'</p> + +<p>However, all these conservative attacks in succession on every measure +which any one could see would become necessities from a merely military +point of view, have had their inevitable result: they have got into the +West, and have aided Secession, as in many cases they were intended to +do. The plain, blunt man, seeing what <i>must</i> be adopted if the war is to +be carried on in earnest, and yet hearing that these inevitable +expediencies were all 'abolition,' became confused and disheartened. So +that it is as true as Gospel, that in the West, where 'Abolition' has +kept one man back from the Union, 'Conservatism' has kept ten. And the +proof may be found that while in the West, as in the East, the better +educated, more intelligent, and more energetic minds, have at once +comprehended the necessities of the war, and dared the whole, 'call it +Abolition or not,' the blinder and more illiterate, who were afraid of +being 'called' Abolitionists, have kept back, or remained by Secession +altogether.</p> + +<p>As we write, a striking proof of our news comes before us in a remark in +an influential and able Western conservative journal, the Nebraska +<i>News</i>, The remark in question is to the effect that the proposition +made by us in <span class="smcap">The Continental Monthly</span>, to partition the +con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>fiscated real estate of the South among the soldiers of the Federal +army is nothing more nor less than 'a bribe for patriotism.' That is the +word.</p> + +<p>Now, politics apart—abolition or no abolition—we presume there are not +ten rational men in the country who believe that the proposition to +colonize Texas in particular, with free labor, or to settle free +Northern soldiers in the cotton country of the South, is other than +judicious and common-sensible. If it will make our soldiers fight any +better, it certainly is not very much to be deprecated. To settle +disbanded volunteers in the South so as to gradually drive away slave +labor by the superior value of free labor on lands confiscated or +public, is certainly not a very reprehensible proposition. But it +originated, as all the more advanced political proposals of the day do, +with men who favor Emancipation, present or prospective, and <i>therefore</i> +it must be cried down! The worst possible construction is put upon it. +It is 'a bribe for patriotism,' and must not be thought of. 'Better lose +the victory,' says Conservatism, 'rather than inspire the zeal of our +soldiers by offering any tangible reward!' We beg our thousands of +readers in the army to note this. Since we first proposed in these +columns to <i>properly</i> reward the army by giving to each man his share of +cotton-land, [we did not even go so far as to insist that the land +should absolutely be confiscated, knowing well, and declaring, that +Texas contains public land enough for this purpose,] the +democratic-conservative-pro-slavery press, especially of the West, has +attacked the scheme with unwonted vigor. For the West <i>understands</i> the +strength latent in this proposal better than the East; it <i>knows</i> what +can be done when free Northern vigor goes to planting and town-building; +it 'knows how the thing is done;' it 'has been there,' and sees in our +'bribe for patriotism' the most deadly blow ever struck at Southern +Aristocracy. Consequently those men who abuse Emancipation in its every +form, violently oppose our proposal to give the army such reward as +their services merit, and such as their residence in the South renders +peculiarly fit. It is 'a bribe;' it is extravagant; it—yes—it is +Abolition! The army is respectfully requested not to think of settling +in the South, but to hobble back to alms-houses in order that Democracy +may carry its elections and settle down in custom-houses and other snug +retreats.</p> + +<p>And what do the anti-energy, anti-action, anti-contraband-digging, +anti-every thing practical and go-ahead in the war gentlemen propose to +give the soldier in exchange for his cotton-land? Let the soldier +examine coolly, if he can, the next bullet-wound in his leg. He will +perceive a puncture which will probably, when traced around the edge and +carefully copied, present that circular form generally assigned to +a—cipher. <i>This</i> represents, we believe, with tolerable accuracy, what +the anti-actionists and reactionists propose to give the soldier as a +recompense for that leg. For so truly as we live, so true is it that +there is not <i>one</i> anti-Emancipationist in the North who is not opposed +to settling the army or any portion of it in the South, simply because +to do any thing which may in any way interfere with 'the Institution,' +or jar Southern aristocracy, forms no part of their platform!</p> + +<p>We believe this to be as plain a fact as was ever yet submitted to +living man.</p> + +<p>Now, are we to go to work in earnest, to boldly grasp at every means of +honorable warfare, as France or England would do in our case, and +overwhelm the South, or are we going to let it alone? Are we, for years +to come, to slowly fight our way from one small war-expediency to +another, as it may please the mongrel puppies of Democracy to gradually +get their eyes opened or not? Are we to arm the blacks by and by, or +wait till they shall have planted another corn-crop for the enemy? Shall +we inspire the soldiers by promising them cotton-lands now, or wait till +we get to the street of By and By, which leads to the house of Never? +Would we like to have our victory now, or wait till we get it?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span></p> + +<p>Up and act! We are waiting for grass to grow while the horse is +starving! Let the Administration no longer hold back, for lo! the people +are ready and willing, and one grasp at a fiercely brave, <i>decided</i> +policy would send a roar of approval from ocean to ocean. One tenth part +of the wild desire to adopt instant and energetic measures which is now +struggling into life among the people, would, if transferred to their +leaders, send opposition, North and South, howling to Hades. We find the +irrepressible discontent gathering around like a thunder-storm. It +reaches us in letters. We <i>know</i> that it is growing tremendously in the +army—the discontent which demands a bold policy, active measures, and +one great overwhelming blow. Every woman cries for it—it is everywhere! +Mr. Lincoln, you have waited for the people, and we tell you that the +people are now ready. The three hundred thousand volunteers are coming +bravely on; but, we tell you, <span class="smcap">Draft</span>! That's the thing. The very +word has already sent a chill through the South. <i>They</i> have seen what +can be done by bold, overwhelming military measures; by driving <i>every</i> +man into arms; by being headlong and fearless; and know that it has put +them at once on equality with us—they, the half minority! And they +know, too, that when WE once begin the 'big game,' all will be up with +them. We have more than twice as many men here, and their own blacks are +but a broken reed. When we begin to <i>draft</i>, however, war will begin <i>in +earnest</i>. They dread that drafting far more than volunteering. They know +by experience, what we have not as yet learned, that drafting contains +many strange secrets of success. It is a <i>bold</i> conscriptive measure, +and indicates serious strength and the <i>consciousness</i> of strength in +government. Our government has hitherto lain half-asleep, half-awake, a +great, good-natured giant, now and then rolling over and crushing some +of the rats running over his bed, and now and then getting very badly +bitten. Wake up, Giant Samuel, all in the morning early! The rats are +coming down on thee, old friend, not by scores, but by tens of +thousands! Jump up, my jolly giant! for verily, things begin to look +serious. You must play the Wide-Awake game now; grasp your stick, knock +them right and left; call in the celebrated dog Halleck, who can kill +his thousand rats an hour, and cry to Sambo to carry out the dead and +bury them! It's rats <i>now</i>, friend Samuel, if it ever was!</p> + +<p>Can not the North play the entire game, and shake out the bag, as well +as the South? They have bundled out every man and dollar, dog, cat, and +tenpenny nail into the war, and done it <i>gloriously</i>. They have stopped +at nothing, feared nothing, believed in nothing but victory. Now let the +North step out! Life and wife, lands and kin, will be of small value if +we are to lose this battle and become the citizens of a broken country, +going backward instead of forward—a country with a past, but no future. +Better draw every man into the army, and leave the women to hoe and +reap, ere we come to that. <i>Draft</i>, Abraham Lincoln—draft, in +<span class="smcap">God's</span> name! Let us have one rousing, tremendous pull at +victory! Send out such armies as never were seen before. The West has +grain enough to feed them, and tide what may betide, you can arm them. +Let us try what WE can do when it comes to the last emergency.</p> + +<p>When we arise in our <i>full</i> strength, England and France and the South +will be as gnats in the flame before us. And there is no time to lose. +France is 'tinkering away' at Mexico; foreign cannon are to pass from +Mexico into the South; our foe is considering the aggressive policy. +Abraham Lincoln, <i>the time has come!</i> Canada is to attack from the +North, and France from Mexico. Your three hundred thousand are a trifle; +draw out your million; draw the last man who can bear arms—<i>and let it +be done quickly!</i> This is your policy. Let the blows rain thick and +fast. Hurrah! Uncle Samuel—the rats are running! Strike quick, +though—<i>very</i> quick—and you will be saved!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="REMINISCENCES_OF_ANDREW_JACKSON" id="REMINISCENCES_OF_ANDREW_JACKSON"></a>REMINISCENCES OF ANDREW JACKSON.</h2> + + +<p>All public exhibitions have their peculiar physiognomies. During the +passage of General Jackson through Philadelphia, there was a very strong +party opposed to him, which gave a feature to the show differing from +others we had witnessed, but which became subdued in a degree by his +appearance. A firm and imposing figure on horseback, General Jackson was +perfectly at home in the saddle. Dressed in black, with a broad-brimmed +white beaver hat, craped in consequence of the recent death of his wife, +he bowed with composed ease and a somewhat military grace to the +multitude. His tall, thin, bony frame, surmounted by a venerable, +weather-beaten, strongly-lined and original countenance, with stiff, +upright, gray hair, changed the opinion which some had previously +formed. His military services were important, his career undoubtedly +patriotic; but he had interfered with many and deep interests. There was +much dissentient humming.</p> + +<p>The General bowed right and left, lifting his hat often from his head, +appearing at the same time dignified and kind. When the cavalcade first +marched down Chestnut street, there was no immediate escort, or it did +not act efficiently. Rude fellows on horseback, of the roughest +description, sat sideling on their torn saddles just before the +President, gazing vacantly in his face as they would from the gallery of +a theatre, but interrupting the view of his person from other portions +of the public.</p> + +<p>James Reeside, the celebrated mail-contractor, became very much provoked +at one of these fellows. Reeside rode a powerful horse before the +President, and with a heavy, long-lashed riding-whip in his hand, +attempted to drive the man's broken-down steed out of the way. But the +animal was as impervious to feeling as the rider to sense or decency, +and Reeside had little influence over a dense crowd, till the escort +exercised a proper authority in front. I saw the General smile at +Reeside's eagerness to clear the way for him. Of course, this sketch is +a glimpse at a certain point where the procession passed me. I viewed it +again in Arch street, and noticed the calmness with which the General +saluted a crowd of negroes who suddenly gave him a hearty cheer from the +wall of a graveyard where they were perched. He had just taken off his +hat to some ladies waving handkerchiefs on the opposite side of the +street, when he heard the huzza, and replied by a salutation to the +unexpected but not despised color.</p> + +<p>After the fatigue of the parade, when invited to take some refreshment, +Jackson asked for boiled rice and milk at dinner. There was some slight +delay to procure them, but he declined any thing else.</p> + +<p>I recollect an anecdote of Daniel Webster in relation to General +Jackson, which I wish to preserve. On some public occasion, an +entertainment was given, under large tents, near Point-no-Point, in +Philadelphia county, which the representatives to the Legislature were +generally invited to attend. Political antipathies and prejudices were +excessive at that day. No moderate person was tolerated, in the +slightest degree, by the more violent opponents of the Administration. +Mr. Webster was present, and rose to speak. His intelligent and serious +air of grave thought was impressively felt. He spoke his objections to a +certain policy of the Administration with a gentle firmness. I sat near +him. One of his intolerant friends made an inquiry, either at the close +of a short dinner-table address, or during his speech, if 'he was not +still in the practice of visiting at the White House?' I saw Webster's +brow become clouded, as he calmly but slowly explained, 'His position as +Senator required him to have occasional intercourse with the President<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> +of the United States, whose views upon some points of national policy +differed widely from those he (Webster) was well known to entertain;' +when, as if his noble spirit became suddenly aware of the narrow +meanness that had induced the question, he raised himself to his full +hight, and looking firmly at his audience, with a pause, till he caught +the eye of the inquirer, he continued: 'I hope to God, gentlemen, never +to live to see the day when a Senator of the United States <i>can not</i> +call upon the Chief Magistrate of the nation, on account of <i>any</i> +differences in opinion either may possess upon public affairs!' This +honorable, patriotic, and liberal expression was most cordially +applauded by all parties. Many left that meeting with a sense of relief +from the oppression of political intolerance, so nearly allied to the +tyranny of religious bigotry.</p> + +<p>I had been introduced, and was sitting with a number of gentlemen in a +circle round the fire of the President's room, when James Buchanan +presented himself for the first time, as a Senator of the United States +from his native State. 'I am happy to see you, Mr. Buchanan,' said +General Jackson, rising and shaking him heartily by the hand, 'both +personally and politically. Sit down, sir.' The conversation was social. +Some one brought in a lighted corn-cob pipe, with a long reed-stalk, for +the President to smoke. He appeared waiting for it. As he puffed at it, +a Western man asked some question about the fire which had been reported +at the Hermitage. The answer made was, 'it had not been much injured,' I +think, 'but the family had moved temporarily into a log-house,' in +which, the General observed, 'he had spent some of the happiest days of +his life.' He then, as if excited by old recollections, told us he had +an excellent plantation, fine cattle, noble horses, a large still-house, +and so on. 'Why, General,' laughed his Western friend, 'I thought I saw +your name, the other day, along with those of other prominent men, +advocating the cold-water system?' 'I did sign something of the kind,' +replied the veteran, very coolly puffing at his pipe, 'but I had a very +good distillery, for all that!' Before markets became convenient, almost +all large plantations had stills to use up the surplus grains, which +could not be sold to a profit near home. Tanneries and blacksmiths' +shops were also accompaniments, for essential convenience.</p> + +<p>Martin, the President's door-keeper, was very independent, at times, to +visitors at the White House, especially if he had been indulging with +his friends, as was now and then the case. But he was somewhat +privileged, on account of his fidelity and humor. Upon one occasion he +gave great offense to some water-drinking Democrats—rather a rare +specimen at that day—who complained to the President. He promised to +speak to Martin about it. The first opportunity—early, while Martin was +cool—the President sent for him in private, and mentioned the +objection. 'Och! Jineral, dear!' said Martin, looking him earnestly in +the face, 'I'de hev enough to do ef I give ear to all the nonsense +people tell me, even about yerself, Jineral! I wonther <i>who</i> folks don't +complain about, now-a-days? But if they are friends of yours, Jineral, +they maybe hed cause, ef I could only recollict what it was! So we'll +jist let it pass by this time, ef you plase, sur!' Martin remained in +his station. When the successor of Mr. Van Buren came in, the +door-keeper presented himself soon after to the new President, with the +civil inquiry: 'I suppose I'll hev to flit, too, with the <i>other</i> +Martin?' He was smilingly told to be easy.</p> + +<p>I saw General Jackson riding in an open carriage, in earnest +conversation with his successor, as I was on the way to the Capitol to +witness the inaugural oath. A few days after, I shook hands with him for +the last time, as he sat in a railroad-car, about to leave Washington +for the West. Crowds of all classes leaped up to offer such salutations, +all of whom he received with the same easy, courteous, decided manner he +had exhibited on other occasions.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="SHAKSPEARES_CARICATURE_OF_RICHARD_III" id="SHAKSPEARES_CARICATURE_OF_RICHARD_III"></a>SHAKSPEARE'S CARICATURE OF RICHARD III.</h2> + + +<p>'The youth of England have been said to take their religion from Milton, +and their history from Shakspeare:' and as far as they draw the +character of the last royal Plantagenet from the bloody ogre which every +grand tragedian has delighted to personate, they set up invention on the +pedestal of fact, and prefer slander to truth. Even from the opening +soliloquy, Shakspeare traduces, misrepresents, vilifies the man he had +interested motives in making infamous; while at the death of Jack Cade, +a cutting address is made to the future monarch upon his deformity, just +TWO <i>years before his birth!</i> There is no sufficient authority for his +having been</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Into this breathing world, scarce half-made up,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And that so lamely and unfashionable,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The dogs bark at me, as I halt by them.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>A Scotch commission addressed him with praise of the 'princely majesty +and royal authority sparkling in his face.' Rev. Dr. Shaw's discourse to +the Londoners, dwells upon the Protector's likeness to the noble Duke, +his father: his mother was a beauty, his brothers were handsome: a +monstrous contrast on Richard's part would have been alluded to by the +accurate Philip de Comines: the only remaining print of his person is at +least fair: the immensely heavy armor of the times may have bowed his +form a little, and no doubt he was pale, and a little higher shouldered +on the right than the left side: but, if Anne always loved him, as is +now proved, and the princess Elizabeth sought his affection after the +Queen's decease, he could not have been the hideous dwarf at which dogs +howl. Nay, so far from there being an atom of truth in that famous +wooing scene which provokes from Richard the sarcasm:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Was ever woman in this humor wooed?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was ever woman in this humor won?'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Richard actually detected her in the disguise of a kitchen-girl, at +London, and renewed his early attachment in the court of the Archbishop +of York. And while Anne was never in her lifetime charged with +insensibility to the death of her relatives, or lack of feeling, she +died not from any cruelty of his, but from weakness, and especially from +grief over her boy's sudden decease. Richard indeed 'loved her early, +loved her late,' and could neither have desired nor designed a calamity +which lost him many English hearts. The burial of Henry VI. Richard +himself solemnized with great state; a favor that no one of Henry's +party was brave and generous enough to return to the last crowned head +of the rival house.</p> + +<p>Gloucester did not need to urge on the well-deserved doom of Clarence: +both Houses of Parliament voted it; King Edward plead for it; the +omnipotent relatives of the Queen hastened it with characteristic +malice; they may have honestly believed that the peaceful succession of +the crown was in peril so long as this plotting traitor lived. No doubt +it was.</p> + +<p>It is next to certain that Richard did not stab Henry VI., nor the +murdered son of Margaret, though he had every provocation in the insults +showered upon his father; was devotedly attached to King Edward, and +hazarded for him person and life with a constancy then unparalleled and +a zeal rewarded by his brother's entire confidence.</p> + +<p>Certain names wear a halter in history, and his was one. Richard I. was +assassinated in the siege of Chalone Castle; Richard II. was murdered at +Pomfret; Richard, Earl of Southampton, was executed for treason; +Richard, Duke of York, was beheaded with insult; his son, Richard III., +fell by the perfidy of his nobles; Richard, the last<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> Duke of York, was +probably murdered by his uncle, in the Tower.</p> + +<p>At the decease of his brother Edward, the Duke of Gloucester was not +only the first prince of the blood royal, but was also a consummate +statesman, intrepid soldier, generous giver, and prompt executor, +naturally compassionate, as is proved by his large pensions to the +families of his enemies, to Lady Hastings, Lady Rivers, the Duchess of +Buckingham, and the rest; peculiarly devout, too, according to a pattern +then getting antiquated, as is shown by his endowing colleges of +priests, and bestowing funds for masses in his own behalf and others. +Shakspeare never loses an opportunity of painting Gloucester's piety as +sheer hypocrisy, but it was not thought so then; for there was a growing +Protestant party whom all these Romanist manifestations of the highest +nobleman in England greatly offended, not to say alarmed.</p> + +<p>Richard's change of virtual into actual sovereignty, in other words, the +Lord Protector's usurpation of the crown, was not done by violence: in +his first royal procession he was unattended by troops; a fickle, +intriguing, ambitious, and warlike nobility approved the change; +Buckingham, Catesby, and others, urged it. No doubt he himself saw that +the crown was not a fit plaything for a twelve years' old boy, in such a +time of frequent treason, ferocious crime, and general recklessness. +There is no question but what, as Richard had more head than any man in +England, he was best fitted to be at its head.</p> + +<p>The great mystery requiring to be explained is, not that 'the +Lancastrian partialities of Shakspeare have,' as Walter Scott said, +'turned history upside down,' and since the battle of Bosworth, no party +have had any interest in vindicating an utterly ruined cause, but how +such troops of nobles revolted against a monarch alike brave and +resolute, wise in council and energetic in act, generous to reward, but +fearful to punish.</p> + +<p>The only solution I am ready to admit is, the imputed assassination of +his young nephews; not only an unnatural crime, but sacrilege to that +divinity which was believed to hedge a king. The cotemporary ballad of +the 'Babes in the Wood,' was circulated by Buckingham to inflame the +English heart against one to whom he had thrown down the gauntlet for a +deadly wrestle. Except that the youngest babe is a girl, and that the +uncle perishes in prison, the tragedy and the ballad wonderfully keep +pace together. In one, the prince's youth is put under charge of an +uncle 'whom wealth and riches did surround;' in the other, 'the uncle is +a man of high estate.' The play soothes the deserted mother with, +'Sister, have comfort;' the ballad with, 'Sweet sister, do not fear.' +The drama says that:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Dighton and Forrest, though they were fleshed villains,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wept like two children, in their death's sad story.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And the poem:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'He bargained with two ruffians strong,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who were of furious mood.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'That the pretty speech they had,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Made murderous hearts relent,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And they that took to do the deed.<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Full sore did now repent.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There is a like agreement in their deaths:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Thus, thus, quoth Dighton, girdling one another<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Within their alabaster, innocent arms.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And the ballad:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'In one another's arms they died.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Finally, the greatest of English tragedies represents Richard's remorse +as:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And every tongue brings in a several tale,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And every tale condemns me for a villain.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>While the most pathetic of English ballads gives it:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'And now the heavy wrath of God<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Upon their uncle fell;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yea, fearful fiends did haunt his house.<br /></span> +<span class="i1">His conscience felt a hell.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>As it is probable that this ballad was started on its rounds by +Buckingham, the arch-plotter, was eagerly circulated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> by the Richmond +conspirators, and sung all over the southern part of England as the +fatal assault on Richard was about to be made, we shall hardly wonder +that, in an age of few books and no journals, the imputed crime hurled a +usurper from his throne.</p> + +<p>But was he really <i>guilty</i>? Did he deserve to be set up as this +scarecrow in English story? The weight of authority says, 'Yes;' facts +are coming to light in the indefatigable research now being made in +England, which may yet say: 'No.'</p> + +<p>The charge was started by the unprincipled Buckingham to excuse his +sudden conversion from an accomplice, if Shakspeare is to be credited, +to a bloodthirsty foe. It was so little received that, months afterward, +the convocation of British clergy addressed King Richard thus, 'Seeing +your most noble and blessed disposition in all other things'—so little +received that when Richmond actually appeared in the field, there was no +popular insurrection in his behalf, only a few nobles joined him with +their own forces; and when their treason triumphed, and his rival sat +supreme on Richard's throne, the three pretended accomplices in the +murder of the princes were so far from punishment that their chief held +high office for nearly a score of years, and then perished for assisting +at the escape of Lady Suffolk, of the house of York. And when Perkin +Warbeck appeared in arms as the murdered Prince Edward, and the +strongest possible motive urged Henry VII. to justify his usurpation by +producing the bones of the murdered princes, (which two centuries +afterward were pretended to be found at the foot of the Tower-stairs,) +at least to publish to the world the three murderers' confessions, and +demonstrate the absurdity of the popular insurrection, Lord Bacon +himself says, that Henry could obtain no proof, though he spared neither +money nor effort! We have even the statement of Polydore Virgil, in a +history written by express desire of Henry VII., that 'it was generally +reported and believed that Edward's sons were still alive, having been +conveyed secretly away, and obscurely concealed in some distant region.'</p> + +<p>And then the story is laden down with improbabilities. That Brakenbury +should have refused this service to so willful a despot, yet not have +fled from the penalty of disobedience, and even have received additional +royal favors, and finally sacrificed his life, fighting bravely in +behalf of the bloodiest villain that ever went unhung, is a large pill +for credulity to swallow.</p> + +<p>Again, that a mere page should have selected as chief butcher a nobleman +high in office, knighted long before this in Scotland, and that this +same Sir Edward Tyrrel should have been continued in office around the +mother of the murdered princes, and honored year after year with high +office by Henry VII., and actually made confidential governor of +Guisnes, and royal commissioner for a treaty with France, seems +perfectly incredible. All of Shakspeare's representation of this most +slandered courtier is, indeed, utterly false; while Bacon's repetition +of the principal charges only shows how impossible it is to recover a +reputation that has once been lost, and how careless history has been in +repeating calumnies that have once found circulation.</p> + +<p>Bayley's history of the Tower proves that what has been popularly +christened the Bloody Tower could never have been the scene of the +supposed murder; that no bones were found under any staircase there; so +that this pretended confirmation of the murder in the time of Charles +II., on which many writers have relied, vanishes into the stuff which +dreams are made of.</p> + +<p>And yet by this charge which the antiquarian Stowe declared was 'never +proved by any credible witness,' which Grafton, Hall, and Holinshead +agreed could never be certainly known; which Bacon declared that King +Henry in vain endeavored to substantiate, a brave and politic monarch +lost his crown, life, and historic fame! Nay, it is a curious fact<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> that +Richard could not safely contradict the report of the princes' deaths +when it broke out with the outbreak of civil war, because it would have +been furnishing to the rebellion a justifying cause and a royal head, +instead of a milksop whom he despised and felt certain to overthrow.</p> + +<p>As it was, Richard left nothing undone to fortify his failing cause; he +may be thought even to have overdone. He doubled his spies, enlisted +fresh troops, erected fortifications, equipped fleets, twice had +Richmond at his fingers' ends, twice saw Providence take his side in the +dispersion of Richmond's fleet, the overthrow of Buckingham's force; +then was utterly ruined by the general treason of his most trusted +nobles and his not unnatural scorn of a pusillanimous rival. In vain did +he strive to be just and generous, vigilant and charitable, politic and +enterprising. The poor excuse for Buckingham's desertion, the refusal of +the grant of Hereford, is refuted by a Harleian MS. recording that royal +munificence; yet Buckingham, without any question, wove the net in which +this lion fell; he seduced the very officers of the court; he invited +Richmond over, assuring him of a popular uprising, which was proved to +be a mere mockery by the miserable handful that rallied around him, +until Richard fell at Bosworth. And after Buckingham's death, Richmond +merely followed <i>his</i> plans, used the tools he had prepared, headed the +conspiracy which this unmitigated traitor arranged, and profited more +than Richard by his death, because he had not to fear an after-struggle +with Buckingham's insatiable ambition, overweening pride, and +unsurpassed popular power.</p> + +<p>As one becomes familiar with the cotemporary statements, the fall of +Richard seems nothing but the treachery which provoked his last outcry +on the field of death. Even Catesby probably turned against him; his own +Attorney-General invited the invaders into Wales with promise of aid; +the Duke of Northumberland, whom Richard had covered over with honor, +held his half of the army motionless while his royal benefactor was +murdered before his eyes. Stanley was a snake in the grass in the next +reign as well as this, and at last expiated his double treason too late +upon the scaffold. Yet while the nobles went over to Richmond's side, +the common people held back; only three thousand troops, perhaps +personal retainers of their lords, united themselves to the two thousand +Richmond hired abroad. It was any thing but a popular uprising against +the jealous, hateful, bloody humpback of Shakspeare; it excuses the +fatal precipitancy with which the King (instead of gathering his troops +from the scattered fortifications) not only hurried on the battle, but, +when the mine of treason began to explode beneath his feet on Bosworth +field, refused to seek safety by flight, but heading a furious charge +upon Richmond, threw his life magnificently away.</p> + +<p>Even had he been guilty of the great crime which cost him his crown, his +fate would have merited many a tear but for the unrivaled genius at +defamation with which the master-dramatist did homage to the triumphant +house of Lancaster. Lord Orford says, that it is evident the Tudors +retained all their Lancastrian prejudices even in the reign of +Elizabeth; and that Shakspeare's drama was patronized by her who liked +to have her grandsire presented in so favorable a light as the deliverer +of his native land from a bloody tyranny.</p> + +<p>Even in taking the darkest view of his case, we find that other English +sovereigns had sinned the same: Henry I. probably murdered the elder +brother whom he robbed; Edward III. deposed his own father; Henry IV. +cheated his nephew of the sceptre, and permitted his assassination; +Shakspeare's own Elizabeth was not over-sisterly to Mary of Scotland; +all around Richard, robbery, treason, violence, lust, murder, were like +a swelling sea. Why was he thus singled out for the anathema of four +centuries? Why was the naked corpse of one who fell fighting valiantly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> +thrown rudely on a horse's back? Why was his stone coffin degraded into +a tavern-trough, and his remains tossed out no man knew where? Not +merely that the Plantagenets never lifted their heads from the gory dust +any more, so that their conquerors wrote the epitaph upon their tombs, +and hired the annalists of their fame; but, still more, that the weak +and assailed Henry required every excuse for his invasion and +usurpation; and that the principal nobility of England wanted a +hiding-place for the shame of their violated oaths, their monstrous +perfidy, their cowardly abandonment in the hour of peril of one of the +bravest leaders, wisest statesmen, and most liberal princes England ever +knew.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_NEGRO_IN_THE_REVOLUTION" id="THE_NEGRO_IN_THE_REVOLUTION"></a>THE NEGRO IN THE REVOLUTION.</h2> + + +<p>Whether the negro can or ought to be employed in the Federal army, or in +any way, for the purpose of suppressing the present rebellion, is +becoming a question of very decided significance. It is a little late in +the day, to be sure, since it is probable that the expensive amusement +of dirt-and-shovel warfare might, by the aid of the black, have been +somewhat shorn of its expense, and our Northern army have counted some +thousands of lives more than it now does, had the contraband been freely +encouraged to delve for his deliverance. Still, there are signs of sense +being slowly manifested by the great conservative mass, and we every day +see proof that there are many who, to conquer the enemy, are willing to +do a bold or practical thing, even if it <i>does</i> please the +Abolitionists. Like the rustic youth who was informed of a sure way to +obtain great wealth if he would pay a trifle, they would not mind +getting <i>that</i> fortune if it <i>did</i> cost a dollar. It <i>is</i> a pity, of +course, saith conservatism, that the South can not be conquered in some +potent way which shall at least make it feel a little bad, and at the +same time utterly annihilate that rather respectably sized majority of +Americans who would gladly see emancipation realized. However, as the +potent way is not known, we must do the best we can. In its secret +conclaves, respectable conservatism shakes its fine old head, and +smoothing down the white cravat inherited from the late great and good +Buchanan, admits that the <i>Richmond Whig</i> is almost right, after +all—this Federal cause <i>is</i> very much in the nature of a 'servile +insurrection' of Northern serfs against gentlemen; '<i>mais que +voulez-vous?</i>—we have got into the wrong boat, and must sink or swim +with the maddened Helots! And conservatism sighs for the good old days +when they blasphemed <i>Liberty</i> at their little suppers,</p> + + +<p class='center'>'And—blest condition!-felt genteel.'</p> + + +<p>To be sure, the portraits of Puritan or Huguenot or Revolutionary +ancestors frowned on them from the walls—the portraits of men who had +risked all things for freedom; ''but this is a different state of +things, you know;' we have changed all that—the heart is on the other +side of the body now—let us be discreet!'</p> + +<p>It is curious, in this connection of employing slaves as workmen or +soldiers, with the remembrance of the progressive gentlemen of the olden +time who founded this republic, to see what the latter thought in their +day of such aid in warfare. And fortunately we have at hand what we +want, in a very <i>multum in parvo</i> pamphlet<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> by George H. Moore, +Librarian of the New-York Historical Society. From this we learn that +while<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> great opposition to the project prevailed, owing to wrong +judgment as to the capacity of the black, the expediency and even +necessity of employing him was, during the events of the war, forcibly +demonstrated, and that, when he <i>was</i> employed in a military capacity, +he proved himself a good soldier.</p> + +<p>There were, however, great and good men during the Revolution, who +warmly sustained the affirmative. The famous Dr. Hopkins wrote as +follows in 1776:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>'God is so ordering it in his providence, that it seems absolutely +necessary something should speedily be done with respect to the +slaves among us, in order to our safety, and to prevent their +turning against us in our present struggle, in order to get their +liberty. Our oppressors have planned to gain the blacks, and induce +them to take up arms against us, by promising them liberty on this +condition; and this plan they are prosecuting to the utmost of +their power, by which means they have persuaded numbers to join +them. And should we attempt to restrain them by force and severity, +keeping a strict guard over them, and punishing them severely who +shall be detected in attempting to join our opposers, this will +only be making bad worse, and serve to render our inconsistence, +oppression and cruelty more criminal, perspicuous and shocking, and +bring down the righteous vengeance of heaven on our heads. The only +way pointed out to prevent this threatening evil, is to set the +blacks at liberty ourselves by some public acts and laws, and then +give them proper encouragement to labor, or take arms in the +defense of the American cause, as they shall choose. This would at +once be doing them some degree of justice, and defeating our +enemies in the scheme they are prosecuting.'</p></div> + +<p>'These,' says Mr. Moore, 'were the views of a philanthropic divine, who +urged them upon the Continental Congress and the owners of slaves +throughout the colonies with singular power, showing it to be at once +their duty and their interest to adopt the policy of emancipation.' They +did not meet with those of the administration of any of the colonies, +and were formally disapproved. But while the enlistment of negroes was +prohibited, the fact is still notorious, as Bancroft says, that 'the +roll of the army at Cambridge had from its first formation borne the +names of men of color.' 'Free negroes stood in the ranks by the side of +white men. In the beginning of the war, they had entered the provincial +army; the first general order which was issued by Ward had required a +return, among other things, of the 'complexion' of the soldiers; and +black men, like others, were retained in the service after the troops +were adopted by the continent.'</p> + +<p>It was determined on, at war-councils and in committees of conference, +in 1775, that negroes should be rejected from the enlistments; and yet +General Washington found, in that same year, that the negroes, if not +employed in the American army, would become formidable foes when +enlisted by the enemy. We may judge, from a note given by Mr. Moore, +that Washington had at least a higher opinion than his <i>confrères</i> of +the power of the black. His apprehensions, we are told, were grounded +somewhat on the operations of Lord Dunmore, whose proclamation had been +issued declaring 'all indented servants, negroes or others, +(appertaining to rebels,) free,' and calling on them to join his +Majesty's troops. It was the opinion of the commander-in-chief, that if +Dunmore was not crushed before spring, he would become the most +formidable enemy America had; 'his strength will increase as a snow-ball +by rolling, and faster, if some expedient can not be hit upon to +convince the slaves and servants of the impotency of his designs.' +Consequently, in general orders, December 30th, he says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>'As the General is informed that numbers of free negroes are +desirous of enlisting, he gives leave to the recruiting-officers to +entertain them, and promises to lay the matter before the Congress, +who, he doubts not, will approve of it.'</p></div> + +<p>Washington communicated his action to Congress, adding: 'If this is +disapproved of by Congress, I will put a stop to it.'</p> + +<p>His letter was referred to a committee of three, (Mr. Wythe, Mr. Adams, +and Mr. Wilson,) on the fifteenth of January,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> 1776, and upon their +report on the following day the Congress determined:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>'That the free negroes who have served faithfully in the army at +Cambridge may be reënlisted therein, but no others.'</p></div> + +<p>That Washington, at a later period at least, warmly approved of the +employment of blacks as soldiers, appears from his remarks to Colonel +Laurens, subsequent to his failure to carry out what even as an effort +forms one of the most remarkable episodes of the Revolution, full +details of which are given in Mr. Moore's pamphlet.</p> + +<p>On March 14th, 1779, Alexander Hamilton wrote to John Jay, then +President of Congress, warmly commending a plan of Colonel Laurens, the +object of which was to raise three or four battalions of negroes in +South-Carolina. We regret that our limits render it impossible to give +the whole of this remarkable document, which is as applicable to the +present day as it was to its own.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>'I foresee that this project will have to combat much opposition +from prejudice and self-interest. The contempt we have been taught +to entertain for the blacks makes us fancy many things that are +founded neither in reason nor experience; and an unwillingness to +part with property of so valuable a kind will furnish a thousand +arguments to show the impracticability, or pernicious tendency, of +a scheme which requires such sacrifices. But it should be +considered that if we do not make use of them in this way, the +enemy probably will; and that the best way to counteract the +temptations they will hold out, will be to offer them ourselves. An +essential part of the plan is to give them their freedom with their +swords. This will secure their fidelity, animate their courage, +and, I believe, will have a good influence upon those who remain, +by opening a door to their emancipation.</p> + +<p>'This circumstance, I confess, has no small weight in inducing me +to wish the success of the project; for the dictates of humanity +and true policy equally interest me in favor of this unfortunate +class of men.</p> + +<p>'While I am on the subject of Southern affairs, you will excuse the +liberty I take in saying, that I do not think measures sufficiently +vigorous are pursuing for our defense in that quarter. Except the +few regular troops of South-Carolina, we seem to be relying wholly +on the militia of that and two neighboring States. These will soon +grow impatient of service, and leave our affairs in a miserable +situation. No considerable force can be uniformly kept up by +militia, to say nothing of the many obvious and well-known +inconveniences that attend this kind of troops. I would beg leave +to suggest, sir, that no time ought to be lost in making a draft of +militia to serve a twelve-month, from the States of North and +South-Carolina and Virginia. But South-Carolina, being very weak in +her population of whites, may be excused from the draft, on +condition of furnishing the black battalions. The two others may +furnish about three thousand five hundred men, and be exempted, on +that account, from sending any succors to this army. The States to +the northward of Virginia will be fully able to give competent +supplies to the army here; and it will require all the force and +exertions of the three States I have mentioned to withstand the +storm which has arisen, and is increasing in the South.</p> + +<p>'The troops drafted must be thrown into battalions, and officered +in the best possible manner. The best supernumerary officers may be +made use of as far as they will go. If arms are wanted for their +troops, and no better way of supplying them is to be found, we +should endeavor to levy a contribution of arms upon the militia at +large. Extraordinary exigencies demand extraordinary means. I fear +this Southern business will become a very <i>grave</i> one.</p> + + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">'With the truest respect and esteem,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">I am, sir, your most obedient servant,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Alexander Hamilton.</span><br /><br /> + +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'His Excellency, John Jay,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">President of Congress,'</span></p> + + +</div> + +<p>The project was warmly approved by Major-General Greene, and Laurens +himself, who proposed to lead the blacks, was enthusiastic in his hopes. +In a letter written about this time, he says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>'It appears to me that I should be inexcusable in the light of a +citizen, if I did not continue my utmost efforts for carrying the +plan of the black levies into execution, while there remains the +smallest hope of success. The House of Representatives will be +convened in a few days. I intend to qualify, and make a final +effort. Oh! that I were a Demosthenes! The Athenians never deserved +a more bitter exprobation than our countrymen.'</p></div> + +<p>But the Legislature of South-Carolina decided, as might have been +expected from the most tory of States in the Rev<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span>olution, as it now is +the most traitorous in the Emancipation—for it is by <i>that</i> name that +this war will be known in history. It rejected Laurens' proposal—his +own words give the best account of the failure:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>'I was outvoted, having only reason on my side, and being opposed +by a triple-headed monster, that shod the baneful influence of +avarice, prejudice, and pusillanimity in all our assemblies. It was +some consolation to me, however, to find that philosophy and truth +had made some little progress since my last effort, as I obtained +twice as many suffrages as before.'</p></div> + +<p>'Washington,' says Mr. Moore, 'comforted Laurens with the confession +that he was not at all astonished by the failure of the plan, adding:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>''That spirit of freedom, which at the commencement of this contest +would have gladly sacrificed every thing to the attainment of its +object, has long since subsided, and every selfish passion has +taken its place. It is not the public, but private interest, which +influences the generality of mankind, nor can the Americans any +longer boast an exception. Under these circumstances, it would +rather have been surprising if you had succeeded.'</p></div> + +<p>But the real lesson which this rejection of negro aid taught this +country was a bitter one. South-Carolina lost twenty-five thousand +negroes, and in Georgia between three fourths and seven eighths of the +slaves escaped. The British organized them, made great use of them, and +they became 'dangerous and well-disciplined bands of marauders.' As the +want of recruits in the American army increased, negroes, both bond and +free, were finally and gladly taken. In the department under General +Washington's command, on August 24th, 1778, there were nearly eight +hundred black soldiers. This does not include, however, the black +regiment of Rhode Island slaves which had just been organized.</p> + +<p>In 1778 General Varnum proposed to Washington that a battalion of negro +slaves be raised, to be commanded by Colonel Greene, Lieutenant-Colonel +Olney, and Major Ward. Washington approved of the plan, which, however, +met with strong opposition from the Rhode Island Assembly. The black +regiment was, however, raised, tried, 'and not found wanting.' As Mr. +Moore declares:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>'In the battle of Rhode-Island, August 29th, 1778, said by +Lafayette to have been 'the best fought action of the whole war,' +this newly raised black regiment, under Colonel Greene, +distinguished itself by deeds of desperate valor, repelling three +times the fierce assaults of an overwhelming force of Hessian +troops. And so they continued to discharge their duty with zeal and +fidelity—never losing any of their first laurels so gallantly won. +It is not improbable that Colonel John Laurens witnessed and drew +some of his inspiration from the scene of their first trial in the +field.'</p></div> + +<p>A company of negroes from Connecticut was also raised and commanded by +the late General Humphreys, who was attached to the family of +Washington. Of this company cotemporary account says that they +'conducted themselves with fidelity and efficiency throughout the war.' +So, little by little, the negro came to be an effective aid, after all +the formal rejections of his service. In 1780, an act was passed in +Maryland to procure one thousand men to serve three years. The property +in the State was divided into classes of sixteen thousand pounds, each +of which was, within twenty days, to furnish one recruit, who might be +either a freeman or a slave. In 1781, the Legislature resolved to raise, +immediately, seven hundred and fifty negroes, to be incorporated with +the other troops.</p> + +<p>In Virginia an act had been passed in 1777, declaring that free negroes, +and free negroes only, might be enlisted on the footing with white men. +Great numbers of Virginians who wished to escape military service, +caused their slaves to enlist, having tendered them to the +recruiting-officers as substitutes for free persons, whose lot or duty +it was to serve in the army, at the same time representing that these +slaves were freemen. 'On the expiration of the term of enlistment, the +former owners at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span>tempted to force them to return to a state of +servitude, with equal disregard of the principles of justice and their +own solemn promise.'</p> + +<p>The iniquity of such proceedings soon raised a storm of indignation, and +the result was the passage of an Act of Emancipation, securing freedom +to all slaves who had served their term in the war.</p> + +<p>Such are the principal facts collected in this remarkable and timely +publication. It is needless to say that we commend it to the careful +perusal of all who desire conclusive information on a most important +subject. It is evident that we are going through nearly the same stages +of timidity, ignorance, and blind conservatism which were passed by our +forefathers, and shall come, if not too late, upon the same results. It +is historically true that Washington apparently had in the beginning +these scruples, but was among the first to lay them aside, and that +experience taught him and many others the folly of scrupling to employ +in regular warfare and in a regular way men who would otherwise aid the +enemy. These are undeniable facts, well worth something more than mere +reflection, and we accordingly commend the work in which they are set +forth, with all our heart, to the reader.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Historical Notes on the Employment of Negroes in the +American Army of the Revolution. By George H. Moore. New-York: Charles +T. Evans, 532 Broadway. Price, ten cents.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="A_MERCHANTS_STORY" id="A_MERCHANTS_STORY"></a>A MERCHANT'S STORY.</h2> + + +<p class='center'><b>'All of which I saw, and part of which I was.'</b></p> + + + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h3> + +<p>The clock of St. Paul's was sounding eight. Buttoning my outside coat +closely about me—for it was a cold, stormy night in November—I +descended the steps of the Astor House to visit, in the upper part of +the city, the blue-eyed young woman who is looking over my shoulder +while I write this—it was nearly twenty years ago, reader, but she is +young yet!</p> + +<p>As I closed the outer door, a small voice at my elbow, in a tone broken +by sobs, said:</p> + +<p>'Sir—will you—please, sir—will you buy some ballads?'</p> + +<p>'Ballads! a little fellow like you selling ballads at this time of +night?'</p> + +<p>'Yes, sir! I haven't sold only three all day, sir; do, please sir, <i>do</i> +buy some!' and as he stood under the one gas-burner which lit the +hotel-porch, I saw that his eyes were red with weeping.</p> + +<p>'Come inside, my little man; don't stand here in the cold. Who sends you +out on such a night as this to sell ballads?'</p> + +<p>'Nobody, sir; but mother is sick, and I <i>have</i> to sell 'em! She's had +nothing to eat all day, sir. Oh! do buy some—<i>do</i> buy some, sir!'</p> + +<p>'I will, my good boy; but tell me, have you no father?'</p> + +<p>'No, sir, I never had any—and mother is sick, <i>very</i> sick, sir; and +she's nobody to do any thing for her but <i>me</i>—nobody but <i>me</i>, sir!' +and he cried as if his very heart would break.</p> + +<p>'Don't cry, my little boy, don't cry; I'll buy your ballads—all of +them;' and I gave him two half-dollar pieces—all the silver I had.</p> + +<p>'I haven't got so many as that, sir; I haven't got only twenty, and +they're only a cent a piece, sir;' and with very evident reluctance, he +tendered me back the money.</p> + +<p>'Oh! never mind, my boy, keep the money and the ballads too.'</p> + +<p>'O sir! thank you. Mother will be so glad, <i>so</i> glad, sir!' and he +turned to go, but his feelings overpowering him, he hid his little face +in the big blanket-shawl which he wore, and sobbed louder and harder +than before.</p> + +<p>'Where does your mother live, my boy?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span></p> + +<p>'Round in Anthony street, sir; some good folks there give her a room, +sir.'</p> + +<p>'Did you say she was sick?'</p> + +<p>'Yes, sir, very sick; the doctor says she can't live only a little +while, sir.'</p> + +<p>'And what will become of you, when she is dead?'</p> + +<p>'I don't know, sir. Mother says God will take care of me, sir.'</p> + +<p>'Come, my little fellow, don't cry any more; I'll go with you and see +your mother.'</p> + +<p>'Oh! thank you, sir; mother will be so glad to have you—so glad to +thank you, sir;' and, looking up timidly an my face, he added: 'You'll +<i>love</i> mother, sir!'</p> + +<p>I took his hand in mine, and we went out into the storm.</p> + +<p>He was not more than six years old, and had a bright, intelligent, but +pale and peaked face. He wore thin, patched trowsers, a small, ragged +cap, and large, tattered boots, and over his shoulders was a worn woolen +shawl. I could not see the remainder of his clothing, but I afterward +discovered that a man's waistcoat was his only other garment.</p> + +<p>As I have said, it was a bleak, stormy night. The rain, which had fallen +all the day, froze as it fell, and the sharp, wintry wind swept down +Broadway, sending an icy chill to my very bones, and making the little +hand I held in mine tremble with cold. We passed several blocks in +silence, when the child turned into a side-street.</p> + +<p>'My little fellow,' I said, 'this is not Anthony street—that is further +on.'</p> + +<p>'I know it, sir; but I want to get mother some bread, sir. A good +gentleman down here sells to me very cheap, sir.'</p> + +<p>We crossed a couple of streets and stopped at a corner-grocery.</p> + +<p>'Why, my little 'un,' said the large, red-faced man behind the counter, +'I didn't know what had become of ye! Why haven't ye bin here to-day?'</p> + +<p>'I hadn't any money, sir,' replied the little boy.</p> + +<p>'An' haven't ye had any bread to-day, sonny?'</p> + +<p>'Mother hasn't had any, sir; a little bit was left last night, but she +made <i>me</i> eat that, sir.'</p> + +<p>'D—n it, an' hasn't <i>she</i> hed any all day! Ye mustn't do that agin, +sonny; ye must come whether ye've money or no; times is hard, but, I +swear, I kin give <i>ye</i> a loaf any time.'</p> + +<p>'I thank you, sir,' I said, advancing from the doorway where I had stood +unobserved—'I will pay you;' and taking a roll of bills from my pocket, +I gave him one. 'You know what they want—send it to them at once.'</p> + +<p>The man stared at me a moment in amazement, then said:</p> + +<p>'An' do ye know 'em, sir?'</p> + +<p>'No, I'm just going there.'</p> + +<p>'Well, do, sir; they're bad off; ye kin do real good there, no mistake.'</p> + +<p>'I'll see,' I replied; and taking the bread in one hand and the little +boy by the other, I started again for his mother's. I was always a rapid +walker, but I had difficulty in keeping up with the little fellow as he +trotted along at my side.</p> + +<p>We soon stopped at the door of an old, weather-worn building, which I +saw by the light of the street-lamp was of dingy brick, three stories +high, and hermetically sealed by green board-shutters. It sat but one +step above the ground, and a dim light which came through the low +basement-windows, showed that even its cellar was occupied. My little +guide rang the bell, and in a moment a panel of the door opened, and a +shrill voice asked:</p> + +<p>'Who's there?'</p> + +<p>'It's only me, ma'am; please let me in.'</p> + +<p>'What, <i>you</i>, Franky, out so late as this!' exclaimed the woman, undoing +the chain which held the door. As she was about closing it she caught +sight of me, and eyeing me for a moment, said: 'Walk in, sir.' As I +complied with the invitation, she added, pointing to a room opening from +the hall: 'Step in there, sir.'</p> + +<p>'He's come to see mother, ma'am,' said the little boy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span></p> + +<p>'You can't see <i>her</i>, sir, she's sick, and don't see company any more.'</p> + +<p>'I would see her for only a moment, madam.'</p> + +<p>'But she can't see nobody now, sir.'</p> + +<p>'Oh! mother would like to see him very much, ma'am; he's a very good +gentleman, ma'am,' said the child, in a pleading, winning tone.</p> + +<p>The real object of my visit seemed to break upon the woman, for, making +a low courtesy, she said:</p> + +<p>'Oh! she <i>will</i> be glad to see you, sir; she's very bad off, very bad +indeed;' and she at once led the way to the basement stairway.</p> + +<p>The woman was about forty, with a round, full form, a red, bloated face, +and eyes which looked as if they had not known a wink of sleep for +years. She wore a dirty lace-cap, trimmed with gaudy colors, and a +tawdry red and black dress, laid off in large squares like the map of +Philadelphia. It was very low in the neck—remarkably so for the +season—and disclosed a scorched, florid skin, and a rough, mountainous +bosom.</p> + +<p>The furnishings of the hall had a shabby-genteel look, till we reached +the basement stairs, when every thing became bare, and dark, and dirty. +The woman led the way down, and opened the door of a front-room—the +only one on the floor, the rest of the space being open, and occupied as +a cellar. This room had a forlorn, cheerless appearance. Its front wall +was of the naked brick, through which the moisture had crept, dotting it +every here and there with large water-stains and blotches of mold. Its +other sides were of rough boards, placed upright, and partially covered +with a dirty, ragged paper. The floor was of wide, unpainted plank. A +huge chimney-stack protruded some three feet into the room, and in it +was a hole which admitted the pipe of a rusty air-tight stove that gave +out just enough heat to take the chill edge off the damp, heavy +atmosphere. This stove, a small stand resting against the wall, a +broken-backed chair, and a low, narrow bed covered with a ragged +patch-work counterpane, were the only furniture of the apartment. And +that room was the home of two human beings.</p> + +<p>'How do you feel to-night, Fanny?' asked the woman, as she approached +the low bed in the corner. There was a reply, but it was too faint for +me to hear.</p> + +<p>'Here, mamma,' said the little boy, taking me by the hand and leading me +to the bedside, 'here's a good gentleman who's come to see you. He's +<i>very</i> good, mamma; he's given me a whole dollar, and got you lots of +things at the store; oh! lots of things!' and the little fellow threw +his arms around his mother's neck, and kissed her again and again in his +joy.</p> + +<p>The mother turned her eye upon me—such an eye! It seemed a black flame. +And her face—so pale, so wan, so woe-begone, and yet so sweetly, +strangely, beautiful—seemed that of some fallen angel, who, after long +ages of torment, had been purified, and fitted again for heaven! And it +was so. She had suffered all the woe, she had wept for all the sin, and +then she stood white and pure before the everlasting gates which were +opening to let her in!</p> + +<p>She reached me her thin, weak hand, and in a low voice, said: 'I thank +you, sir.'</p> + +<p>'You are welcome, madam. You are very sick; it hurts you to speak?'</p> + +<p>She nodded slightly, but said nothing. I turned to the woman who had +admitted me, and in a very low tone said: 'I never saw a person die; is +she not dying?'</p> + +<p>'No, sir, I guess not. She's seemed so for a good many days.'</p> + +<p>'Has she had a physician?'</p> + +<p>'Not for nigh a month. A doctor come once or twice, but he said it wan't +no use—he couldn't help her.'</p> + +<p>'But she should have help at once. Have you any one you can send?'</p> + +<p>'Oh! yes; I kin manage that. What doctor will you have?'</p> + +<p>I wrote on a piece of paper the name of an acquaintance—a skillful and +experienced physician, who lived not far off—and gave it to her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span></p> + +<p>'And can't you make her a cup of tea, and a little chicken-broth? She +has had nothing all day.'</p> + +<p>'Nothing all day! I'm sure I didn't know it! I'm poor, sir—you don't +know how poor—but she shan't starve in my house.'</p> + +<p>'I suppose she didn't like to speak of it; but get her something as soon +as you can.'</p> + +<p>'I will, sir; I'll fix her some tea and broth right off.'</p> + +<p>'Well, do, as quick as possible. I'll pay you for your trouble.'</p> + +<p>'I don't want any pay, sir,' she replied, as she turned and darted from +the doorway as nimbly as if she had not been fat and forty.</p> + +<p>She soon returned with the tea, and I gave it to the sick girl, a +spoonful at a time, she being too weak to sit up. It was the first she +had tasted for weeks, and it greatly revived her.</p> + +<p>After a time, the doctor came. He felt her pulse, asked, her a few +questions in a low voice, and then wrote some simple directions. When he +had done that, he turned to me and said: 'Step outside for a moment; I +want to speak with you.'</p> + +<p>As we passed out, we met the woman going in with the broth.</p> + +<p>'Please give it to her at once,' I said.</p> + +<p>'Yes, sir, I will; but, gentlemen, don't stand here in the cold. Walk up +into the parlor—the front-room.'</p> + +<p>We did as she suggested, for the cellar-way had a damp, unhealthy air.</p> + +<p>The parlor was furnished in a showy, tawdry style, and a worn, ugly, +flame-colored carpet covered its floor. A coal-fire was burning in the +grate, and we sat down by it. As we did so, I heard loud voices, mingled +with laughter and the clinking of glasses, in the adjoining room. Not +appearing to notice the noises, the doctor asked:</p> + +<p>'Who is this woman?'</p> + +<p>'I don't know; I never saw her before. Is she dying?'</p> + +<p>'No, not now. But she can't last long; a week, at the most.'</p> + +<p>'She evidently has the consumption. That damp cellar has killed her; she +should be got out of it.'</p> + +<p>'The cellar hasn't done it; her very vitals are eaten up. She's been +beyond cure for six months!'</p> + +<p>'Is it possible? And such a woman!'</p> + +<p>'Oh! I see such cases every day—women as fine-looking as she is.'</p> + +<p>A ring came at the front-door, and in a moment I heard the woman coming +up the basement stairs. I had risen when the doctor made the last +remark, and was pacing up and down the room, deliberating on what should +be done. The parlor-door was ajar, and as the woman admitted the +new-comers, I caught a glimpse of them. They were three rough, +hard-looking characters; and one, from his unsteady gait, I judged to be +intoxicated. She seemed glad to see them, and led them into the room +from whence the noises proceeded. In a moment the doctor rose to go, +saying: 'I can do nothing more. But what do you intend to do here? I +brought you out to ask you.'</p> + +<p>'I don't know what <i>can</i> be done. She ought not to be left to die +there.'</p> + +<p>'She'd prefer dying above-ground, no doubt; and if you relish fleecing, +you'll get her an upper room—but she's got to die soon any way, and a +day or two, more or less, down there, won't make any difference. Take my +advice—don't throw your money away, and don't stay here too late; the +house has a very hard name, and some of its rough customers would think +nothing of throttling a spruce young fellow like you.'</p> + +<p>'I thank you, doctor, but I think I'll run the risk—at least for a +while,' and I laughed good-humoredly at the benevolent gentleman's +caution.</p> + +<p>'Well, if you lose your small change, don't charge it to me.' Saying +this, he bade me 'good-night.'</p> + +<p>He found the door locked, barred, and secured by the large chain, and he +was obliged to summon the woman. When she had let him out, I asked her +into the parlor.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span></p> + +<p>'Who is this sick person?' I inquired.</p> + +<p>'I don't know, sir. She never gave me no name but Fanny. I found her and +her little boy on the door-step, one night, nigh a month ago. She was +crying hard, and seemed very sick, and little Franky was a-trying to +comfort her—he's a brave, noble little fellow, sir. She told me she'd +been turned out of doors for not paying her rent, and was afeared she'd +die in the street, though she didn't seem to care much about that, +except for the boy—she took on terrible about him. She didn't know what +<i>would</i> become of him. I've to scrape very hard to get along, sir, for +times is hard, and my rent is a thousand dollars; but I couldn't see her +die there, so I took her in, and put a bed up in the basement, and let +her have it. 'Twas all I could do; but, poor thing! she won't want even +that long.'</p> + +<p>'It was very good of you. How has she obtained food?'</p> + +<p>'The little boy sells papers and ballads about the streets. The newsman +round the corner trusts him for 'em, and he's managed to make +twenty-five cents or more most every day.'</p> + +<p>'Can't you give her another room? She should not die where she is.'</p> + +<p>'I know she shouldn't, sir, but I hain't got another—all of 'em is +taken up; and besides, sir,' and she hesitated a moment, 'the noise up +here would disturb her.'</p> + +<p>I had not thought of that; and expressing myself gratified with her +kindness, I passed down again to the basement. The sick girl smiled as I +opened the door, and held out her hand again to me. Taking it in mine, I +asked:</p> + +<p>'Do you feel better?'</p> + +<p>'Much better,' she said, in a voice stronger than before. 'I have not +felt so well for a long time. I owe it to you, sir! I am very grateful.'</p> + +<p>'Don't speak of it, madam. Won't you have more of the broth?'</p> + +<p>'No more, thank you. I won't trouble you any more, sir—I shan't trouble +any one long;' and her eyes filled, and her voice quivered; 'but, O sir! +my child! my little boy! What <i>will</i> become of him when I'm gone?' and +she burst into a hysterical fit of weeping.</p> + +<p>'Don't weep so, madam. Calm yourself; such excitement will kill you. God +will provide for your child. I will try to help him, madam.'</p> + +<p>She looked at me with those deep, intense eyes. A new light seemed to +come into them; it overspread her face, and lit up her thin, wan +features with a strange glow.</p> + +<p>'It must be so,' she said, 'else why were you led here? God must have +sent you to me for that!'</p> + +<p>'No doubt he did, madam. Let it comfort you to think so.'</p> + +<p>'It does, oh! it does. And, O my Father!' and she looked up to Him as +she spoke: 'I thank thee! Thy poor, sinful, dying child thanks thee; +and, oh! bless <i>him</i>, forever bless him, for it!'</p> + +<p>I turned away to hide the emotion I could not repress. A moment after, +not seeing the little boy, I asked:</p> + +<p>'Where is your son?'</p> + +<p>'Here, sir.' And turning down the bed-clothing, she showed him sleeping +quietly by her side, all unconscious of the misery and the sin around +him, and of the mighty crisis through which his young life was passing.</p> + +<p>Saying I would return on the following day, I shortly afterward bade her +'good-night,' and left the house.</p> + + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h3> + +<p>It was noon on the following day when I again visited the house in +Anthony street. As I opened the door of the sick woman's room, I was +startled by her altered appearance. Her eye had a strange, wild light, +and her face already wore the pallid hue of death. She was bolstered up +in bed, and the little boy was standing by her side, weeping, his arms +about her neck. I took her hand in mine, and in a voice which plainly +spoke my fears, said:</p> + +<p>'You are worse!'</p> + +<p>In broken gasps, and in a low, a very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> low tone, her lips scarcely +moving, she answered:</p> + +<p>'No! I am—better—much—better. I knew you—were coming. She told me +so.'</p> + +<p>'<i>Who</i> told you so?' I asked, very kindly, for I saw that her mind was +wandering.</p> + +<p>'My mother—she has been with me—all the day—and I have been so—so +happy, so—<i>very</i> happy! I am going now—going with her—I've only +waited—for you!'</p> + +<p>'Say no more now, madam, say no more; you are too weak to talk.'</p> + +<p>'But I <i>must</i> talk. I am—dying, and I must tell—you all before—I go!'</p> + +<p>'I would gladly hear you, but you have not strength for it now. Let me +get something to revive you.'</p> + +<p>She nodded assent, and looking at her son, said:</p> + +<p>'Take Franky.'</p> + +<p>The little boy kissed her, and followed me from the room. When we had +reached the upper-landing, I summoned the woman of the house, and said +to him:</p> + +<p>'Now, Franky, I want you to stay a little while with this good lady; +your mother would talk with me.'</p> + +<p>'But mother says she's dying, sir,' cried the little fellow, clinging +closely to me; 'I don't want her to die, sir. Oh! I want to be with her, +sir!'</p> + +<p>'You shall be, very soon, my boy; your <i>mother</i> wants you to stay with +this lady now.'</p> + +<p>He released his hold on my coat, and sobbing violently, went with the +red-faced woman. I hurried back from the apothecary's, and seating +myself on the one rickety chair by her bedside, gave the sick woman the +restorative. She soon revived, and then, in broken sentences, and in a +low, weak voice, pausing every now and then to rest or to weep, she told +me her story. Weaving into it some details which I gathered from others +after her death, I give it to the reader as she outlined it to me.</p> + +<p>She was the only daughter of a well-to-do farmer in the town of B——, +New-Hampshire. Her mother died when she was a child, and left her to the +care of a paternal aunt, who became her father's housekeeper. This aunt, +like her father, was of a cold, hard nature, and had no love for +children. She was, however, an exemplary, pious woman. She denied +herself every luxury, and would sit up late of nights to braid straw and +knit socks, that she might send tracts and hymn-books to the poor +heathen; but she never gave a word of sympathy, or a look of love to the +young being that was growing up by her side. The little girl needed +kindness and affection, as much as plants need the sun; but the good +aunt had not these to give her. When the child was six years old, she +was sent to the district-school. There she met a little boy not quite +five years her senior, and they soon became warm friends. He was a +brave, manly lad, and she thought no one was ever so good, or so +handsome as he. Her young heart found in him what it craved for—some +one to lean on and to love, and she loved him with all the strength of +her child-nature. He was very kind to her. Though his home was a mile +away, he came every morning to take her to school, and in the long +summer vacations he almost lived at her father's house. And thus four +years flew away—flew as fast as years that are winged with youth and +love always fly—and though her father was harsh, and her aunt cold and +stern, she did not know a grief, or shed a tear in all that time.</p> + +<p>One day, late in summer, toward the close of those four years, +John—that was his name—came to her, his face beaming all over with +joy, and said:</p> + +<p>'O Fanny! I am going—going to Boston. Father [he was a richer man than +her father] has got me into a great store there—a great store, and I'm +to stay till I'm twenty-one—they won't pay me hardly any thing—only +fifty dollars the first year, and twenty-five more every other year—but +father says it's a great store, and it'll be the making of me.' And he +danced and sung for joy, but she wept in bitter grief.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span></p> + +<p>Well, five more years rolled away—this time they were not winged as +before—and John came home to spend his two weeks of summer vacation. He +had come every year, but then he said to her what he had never said +before—that which a woman never forgets. He told her that the old +Quaker gentleman, the head of the great house he was with, had taken a +fancy to him, and was going to send him to Europe, in the place of the +junior partner, who was sick, and might never get well. That he should +stay away a year, but when he came back, he was sure the old fellow +would make him a partner, and then—and he strained her to his heart as +he said it—'then I will make you my little wife, Fanny, and take you to +Boston, and you shall be a fine lady—as fine a lady as Kate Russell, +the old man's daughter.' And again he danced and sung, and again she +wept, but this time it was for joy.</p> + +<p>He staid away a little more than a year, and when he returned he did not +come at once to her, but he wrote that he would very soon. In a few days +he sent her a newspaper, in which was a marked notice, which read +somewhat as follows:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>'The co-partnership heretofore existing under the name and style of +<span class="smcap">Russell, Rollins</span> & Co., has been dissolved by the death of +<span class="smcap">David Gray</span>, Jr.</p> + +<p>'The outstanding affairs will be settled, and the business +continued, by the surviving partners, who have this day admitted +Mr. <span class="smcap">John Hallet</span> to an interest in their firm.'</p></div> + +<p>The truth had been gradually dawning upon me, yet when she mentioned his +name, I sprang involuntarily to my feet, exclaiming:</p> + +<p>'John Hallet! and were <i>you</i> betrothed to <i>him</i>?'</p> + +<p>The sick woman had paused from exhaustion, but when I said that, she +made a feeble effort to raise herself, and said in a stronger voice than +before:</p> + +<p>'Do you know him—sir?'</p> + +<p>'Know him! Yes, madam;' and I paused and spoke in a lower tone, for I +saw that my manner was unduly exciting her; 'I know him well.'</p> + +<p>I did know him <i>well</i>, and it was on the evening of the day that notice +was written, and just one month after David had followed his only son to +the grave, that I, a boy of sixteen, with my hat in my hand, entered the +inner office of the old counting-room to which I have already introduced +the reader. Mr. Russell, a genial, gentle, good old man, was seated at +his desk, writing; and Mr. Rollins sat at his, poring over some long +accounts.</p> + +<p>'Mr. Russell and Mr. Rollins,' I said very respectfully, 'I have come to +bid you good-by. I am going to leave you.'</p> + +<p>'Thee going to leave!' exclaimed Mr. Russell, laying down his +spectacles; 'what does thee mean, Edmund?'</p> + +<p>'I mean, I don't want to stay any longer, sir,' I replied, my voice +trembling with emotion.</p> + +<p>'But you must stay, Edmund,' said Mr. Rollins, in his harsh, imperative +way. 'Your uncle indentured you to us till you are twenty-one, and you +can't go.'</p> + +<p>'I <i>shall</i> go, sir,' I replied, with less respect than he deserved. 'My +uncle indentured me to the old firm; I am not bound to stay with the +new.'</p> + +<p>Mr. Russell looked grieved, but in the same mild tone as before, he +said:</p> + +<p>'I am sorry, Edmund, very sorry, to hear thee say that. Thee can go if +thee likes; but it grieves me to hear thee quibble so. Thee will not +prosper, my son, if thee follows this course in life.' And the moisture +came into the old man's eyes as he spoke. It filled mine, and rolled in +large drops down my cheeks, as I replied:</p> + +<p>'Forgive me, sir, for speaking so. I do not want to do wrong, but I +<i>can't</i> stay with John Hallet.'</p> + +<p>'Why can't thee stay with John?'</p> + +<p>'He don't like me, sir. We are not friends.'</p> + +<p>'Why are you not friends?'</p> + +<p>'Because I know him, sir.'</p> + +<p>'What do you know of him?' asked Mr. Rollins, in the same harsh, abrupt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> +tone. I had never liked Mr. Rollins, and his words just then stung me to +the quick, I forgot myself, for I replied:</p> + +<p>'I know him to be a lying, deceitful, hypocritical scoundrel, sir.'</p> + +<p>Some two years before, Hallet had joined the church in which Mr. Rollins +was a deacon, and was universally regarded as a pious, devout young man. +The opinion I expressed was, therefore, rank heterodoxy. To my surprise, +Mr. Rollins turned to Mr. Russell and said:</p> + +<p>'I believe the boy is right, Ephraim; John professes too much to be +entirely sincere; I've told you so before.'</p> + +<p>'I can't think so, Thomas; but it's too late to alter things now. We +shall see. Time will prove him.'</p> + +<p>I soon left, but not till they had shaken me warmly by the hand, wished +me well, and tendered me their aid whenever I required it. In +after-years they kept their word.</p> + +<p>Yes, I did know John Hallet. The old gentleman never knew him, but time +proved him, and those whom that good old man loved with all the love of +his large, noble heart, suffered because he did not know him as I did.</p> + +<p>After I had given her some of the cordial, and she had rested awhile, +the sick girl resumed her story.</p> + +<p>In about a month Hallet came. He pictured to her his new position; the +wealth and standing it would give him, and he told her that he was +preparing a little home for her, and would soon return and take her with +him forever.</p> + +<p>[When he said that, he had been for over a year affianced to another—a +rich man's only child—a woman older than he, whose shriveled, jaundiced +face, weak, scrawny body, and puny, sickly soul, would have been +repulsive even to him, had not money been his god.]</p> + +<p>The simple, trusting girl believed him. He importuned her—she loved +him—and she fell!</p> + +<p>About a month afterward, taking up a Boston paper, she read the marriage +of Mr. John Hallet, merchant, to Miss ——. 'Some other person has +his name,' she thought. 'It can not be he, yet it is strange!' It <i>was</i> +strange, but it was <i>true</i>, for there, in another column, she saw that: +'Mr. John Hallet, of the house of Russell, Rollins & Co., and his +accomplished lady, were passengers by the steamer Cambria, which sailed +from this port yesterday for Liverpool.'</p> + +<p>The blow crushed her. But why need I tell of her grief, her agony, her +despair? For months she did not leave her room; and when at last she +crawled into the open air, the nearest neighbors scarcely recognized +her.</p> + +<p>It was long, however, before she knew all the wrong that Hallet had done +her. Her aunt noticed her altered appearance, and questioned her. She +told her all. At first, the cold, hard woman blamed her, and spoke +harshly to her; but, though cold and harsh, she had a woman's heart, and +she forgave her. She undertook to tell the story to her brother. He had +his sister's nature; was a strict, pious, devout man; prayed every +morning and evening in his family, and, rain or shine, went every Sunday +to hear two dull, cast-iron sermons at the old meeting-house, but he had +not her woman's heart. He stormed and raved for a time, and then he +cursed his only child, and drove her from his house. The aunt had forty +dollars—the proceeds of sock-knitting and straw-braiding not yet +invested in hymn-books, and with one sigh for the poor heathen, she gave +it to her. With that, and a small satchel of clothes, and with two +little hearts beating under her bosom, she went out into the world. +Where could she go? She knew not, but she wandered on till she reached +the village. The stage was standing before the tavern-door, and the +driver was mounting the box to start. She thought for a moment. She +could not stay there. It would anger her father, if she did—no one +would take her in—and besides, she could not meet, in her misery and +her shame, those who had known her since childhood. She spoke to the +driver; he dismounted, opened the door, and she took a seat in the coach +to go—she did not know whither, she did not care where.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span></p> + +<p>They rode all night, and in the morning reached Concord. As she stepped +from the stage, the red-faced landlord asked her if she was going +further. She said, 'I do not know, sir;' but then a thought struck her. +It was five months since Hallet had started for Europe, and perhaps he +had returned. She would go to him. Though he could not undo the wrong he +had done, he still could aid and pity her. She asked the route to +Boston, and after a light meal, was on the way thither.</p> + +<p>She arrived after dark, and was driven to the Marlboro Hotel—that +Eastern Eden for lone women and tobacco-eschewing men—and there she +passed the night. Though weak from recent illness, and worn and wearied +with the long journey, she could not rest or sleep. The great sorrow +that had fallen on her had driven rest from her heart, and quiet sleep +from her eye-lids forever. In the morning she inquired the way to +Russell, Rollins & Co.'s, and after a long search found the grim, old +warehouse. She started to go up the rickety old stairs, but her heart +failed her. She turned away and wandered off through the narrow, crooked +streets—she did not know for how long. She met the busy crowd hurrying +to and fro, but no one noticed or cared for her. She looked at the neat, +cheerful homes smiling around her, and she thought how every one had +shelter and friends but her. She gazed up at the cold, gray sky, and oh! +how she longed that it might fall down and bury her forever. And still +she wandered till her limbs grew weary and her heart grew faint. At last +she sank down exhausted, and wept—wept as only the lost and the utterly +forsaken can weep. Some little boys were playing near, and after a time +they left their sports, and came to her. They spoke kindly to her, and +it gave her strength. She rose and walked on again. A livery-carriage +passed her, and she spoke to the coachman. After a long hour she stood +once more before the old warehouse. It was late in the afternoon, and +she had eaten nothing all day, and was very faint and tired. As she +turned to go up the old stairway, her heart again failed her, but +summoning all her strength, she at last entered the old counting-room.</p> + +<p>A tall, spare, pleasant-faced man, was standing at the desk, and she +asked him if Mr. John Hallet was there.</p> + +<p>'No, madam, he's in Europe.'</p> + +<p>'When will he come back, sir?'</p> + +<p>'Not for a year, madam;' and David raised his glasses and looked at her. +He had not done it before.</p> + +<p>Her last hope had failed, and with a heavy, crushing pain in her heart, +and a dull, dizzy feeling in her head, she turned to go. As she +staggered away a hand was gently placed on her arm, and a mild voice +said:</p> + +<p>'You are ill, madam; sit down.'</p> + +<p>She took the proffered seat, and an old gentleman came out of the inner +office.</p> + +<p>'What! what's this, David?' he asked. 'What ails the young woman?'</p> + +<p>(She was then not quite seventeen.)</p> + +<p>'She's ill, sir,' said David.</p> + +<p>'Only a little tired, sir; I shall be better soon.'</p> + +<p>'But thee <i>is</i> ill, my child; thee looks so. Come here, Kate!' and the +old gentleman raised his voice as if speaking to some one in the inner +room. The sick girl lifted her eyes, and saw a blue-eyed, golden-haired +young woman, not so old as she was.</p> + +<p>'She seems very sick, father. Please, David, get me some water;' and the +young lady undid the poor girl's bonnet, and bathed her temples with the +cool, grateful fluid. After a while the old gentleman asked:</p> + +<p>'What brought thee here, young woman?'</p> + +<p>'I came to see John—Mr. Hallet, I mean, sir.'</p> + +<p>'Thee knows John, then?'</p> + +<p>'Oh! yes, sir.'</p> + +<p>'Where does thee live?'</p> + +<p>She was about to say that she had no home, but checking herself, for it +would seem strange that a young girl who knew John Hallet, should be +homeless, she answered:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span></p> + +<p>'In New-Hampshire. I live near old Mr. Hallet's, sir. I came to see John +because I've known him ever since I was a child.'</p> + +<p>She drank of the water, and after a little time rose to go. As she +turned toward the door, the thought of going out alone, with her great +sorrow, into the wide, desolate world, crossed her mind, the heavy, +crushing pain came again into her heart, the dull, dizzy feeling into +her head, the room reeled, and she fell to the floor.</p> + +<p>It was after dark when she came to herself. She was lying on a bed in a +large, splendidly furnished room, and the same old gentleman and the +same young woman were with her. Another old gentleman was there, and as +she opened her eyes, he said:</p> + +<p>'She will be better soon; her nervous system has had a severe shock; the +difficulty is there. If you could get her to confide in you, 'twould +relieve her; it is <i>hidden</i> grief that kills people. She needs rest, +now. Come, my child, take this,' and he held a fluid to her lips. She +drank it, and in a few moments sank into a deep slumber.</p> + +<p>It was late on the following morning when she awoke, and found the same +young woman at her bedside.</p> + +<p>'You are better, now, my sister. A few days of quiet rest will make you +well,' said the young lady.</p> + +<p>The kind, loving words, almost the first she had ever heard from woman, +went to her heart, and she wept bitterly as she replied:</p> + +<p>'Oh! no, there is no rest, no more rest for me!'</p> + +<p>'Why so? What is it that grieves you? Tell me; it will ease your pain to +let me share it with you.'</p> + +<p>She told her, but she withheld his name. Once it rose to her lips, but +she thought how those good people would despise him, how Mr. Russell +would cast him off, how his prospects would be blasted, and she kept it +back.</p> + +<p>'And that is the reason you went to John? You knew what a good, +Christian young man he is, and you thought he would aid you?'</p> + +<p>'Yes!' said the sick girl.</p> + +<p>Thus she punished him for the great wrong he had done her; thus she +recompensed him for robbing her of home, of honor, and of peace!</p> + +<p>Kate told her father the story, and the good old man gave her a room in +one of his tenement houses, and there, a few months later, she gave +birth to a little boy and girl. She was very sick, but Kate attended to +her wants, procured her a nurse, and a physician, and gave her what she +needed more than all else—kindness and sympathy.</p> + +<p>Previous to her sickness she had earned a support by her needle, and +when she was sufficiently recovered, again had recourse to it. Her +earnings were scanty, for she was not yet strong, but they were eked out +by an occasional remittance from her aunt, which good lady still adhered +to her sock-knitting, straw-braiding habits, but had turned her back +resolutely on her benighted brethren and sisters of the Feejee Islands.</p> + +<p>Thus nearly a year wore away, when her little girl sickened and died. +She felt a mother's pang at first, but she shed no tears, for she knew +it was 'well with the child;' that it had gone where it would never know +a fate like hers.</p> + +<p>The watching with it, added to her other labors, again undermined her +health. The remittance from her aunt did not come as usual, and though +she paid no rent, she soon found herself unable to earn a support. The +Russells had been so good, so kind, had done so much for her, that she +could not ask them for more. What, then, should she do? One day, while +she was in this strait, Kate called to see her, and casually mentioned +that John Hallet had returned. She struggled with her pride for a time, +but at last made up her mind to apply to him. She wrote to him; told him +of her struggles, of her illness, of her many sufferings, of her little +boy—his image, his child<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span>—then playing at her feet, and she besought +him by the love he bore her in their childhood, not to let his once +affianced wife, and his poor, innocent child STARVE!</p> + +<p>Long weeks went by, but no answer came; and again she wrote him.</p> + +<p>One day, not long after sending this last letter, as she was crossing +the Common to her attic in Charles street, she met him. He was alone, +and saw her, but attempted to pass her without recognition. She stood +squarely in his way, and told him she <i>would</i> be heard. He admitted +having received her letters, but said he could do nothing for her; that +the brat was not <i>his</i>; that she must not attempt to fasten on <i>him</i> the +fruit of her debaucheries; that no one would believe her if she did; and +he added, as he turned away, that he was a married man, and a Christian, +and could not be seen talking with a lewd woman like her.</p> + +<p>She was stunned. She sank down on one of the benches on the Common, and +tried to weep; but the tears would not come. For the first time since he +so deeply, basely wronged her, she felt a bitter feeling rising in her +heart. She rose, and turned her steps up Beacon Hill toward Mr. +Russell's, fully determined to tell Kate all. She was admitted, and +shown to Miss Russell's room. She told her that she had met her seducer, +and how he had cast her off.</p> + +<p>'Who is he?' asked Kate. 'Tell me, and father shall publish him from one +end of the universe to the other! He does not deserve to live.'</p> + +<p>His name trembled on her tongue. A moment more, and John Hallet would +have been a ruined man, branded with a mark that would have followed him +through the world. But she paused; the vision of his happy wife, of the +innocent child just born to him, rose before her, and the words melted +away from her lips unspoken.</p> + +<p>Kate spoke kindly and encouragingly to her, but she heeded her not. One +only thought had taken possession of her: how could she throw off the +mighty load that was pressing on her soul?</p> + +<p>After a time, she rose and left the house. As she walked down Beacon +street, the sun was just sinking in the West, and its red glow mounted +midway up the heavens. As she looked at it, the sky seemed one great +molten sea, with its hot, lurid waves surging all around her. She +thought it came nearer; that it set on fire the green Common and the +great houses, and shot fierce, hot flames through her brain and into her +very soul. For a moment, she was paralyzed and sank to the ground; then +springing to her feet, she flew to her child. She bounded down the long +hill, and up the steep stairways, and burst into the room of the good +woman who was tending him, shouting:</p> + +<p>'Fire! fire! The world is on fire! Run! run! the world is on fire!'</p> + +<p>She caught up her babe and darted away. With him in her arms, she flew +down Charles street, across the Common, and through the crowded +thoroughfares, till she reached India Wharf, all the while muttering, +'Water, water;' water to quench the fire in her blood, in her brain, in +her very soul.</p> + +<p>She paused on the pier, and gazed for a moment at the dark, slimy flood; +then she plunged down, down, where all is forgetfulness!</p> + +<p>She had a dim recollection of a storm at sea; of a vessel thrown +violently on its beam-ends; of a great tumult, and of voices louder than +she ever heard before—voices that rose above the howling of the tempest +and the surging of the great waves—calling out: 'All hands to clear +away the foremast!' But she knew nothing certain. All was chaos.</p> + +<p>The next thing she remembered was waking one morning in a little room +about twelve feet square, with a small grated opening in the door. The +sun had just risen, and by its light she saw she was lying on a low, +narrow bed, whose clothing was spotlessly white and clean. Her little +boy was sleeping by her side. His little cheeks had a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> rosier, healthier +hue than they ever wore before; and as she turned down the sheet, she +saw he had grown wonderfully. She could hardly credit her senses. Could +that be <i>her</i> child?</p> + +<p>She spoke to him. He opened his eyes and smiled, and put his little +mouth up to hers, saying, 'Kiss, mamma, kiss Fanky.' She took him in her +arms, and covered him with kisses. Then she rose to dress herself. A +strange but neat and tidy gown was on the chair, and she put it on; it +fitted exactly. Franky then rolled over to the front of the bed, and +putting first one little foot out and then the other, let himself down +to the floor. 'Can it be?' she thought, 'can he both walk and talk?' +Soon she heard the bolt turning in the door. It opened, and a pleasant, +elderly woman, with a large bundle of keys at her girdle, entered the +room.</p> + +<p>'And how do you do this morning, my daughter?' she asked.</p> + +<p>'Very well, ma'am. Where am I, ma'am?'</p> + +<p>'You ask where? Then you <i>are</i> well. You haven't been for a long, long +time, my child.'</p> + +<p>'And <i>where</i> am I, ma'am?'</p> + +<p>'Why, you are here—at Bloomingdale.'</p> + +<p>'How long have I been here?'</p> + +<p>'Let me see; it must be near fifteen months, now.'</p> + +<p>'And who brought me?'</p> + +<p>'A vessel captain. He said that just as he was hauling out of the dock +at Boston, you jumped into the water with your child. One of his men +sprang overboard and saved you. The vessel couldn't put back, so he +brought you here.'</p> + +<p>'Merciful heaven! did I do that?'</p> + +<p>'Yes. You must have been sorely troubled, my child. But never mind—it +is all over now. But hasn't Franky grown? Isn't he a handsome boy? Come +here to grandma, my baby.' And the good woman sat down on a chair, while +the little fellow ran to her, put his small arms around her neck, and +kissed her over and over again. Children are intuitive judges of +character; no really bad man or woman ever had the love of a child.</p> + +<p>'Yes, he <i>has</i> grown. You call him Franky, do you?'</p> + +<p>'Yes; we didn't know his name. What had you named him?'</p> + +<p>'John Hallet.'</p> + +<p>As she spoke those words, a sharp pang shot through her heart. It was +well that her child had another name!</p> + +<p>She was soon sufficiently recovered to leave the asylum. By the kind +offices of the matron, she got employment in a cap-factory, and a plain +but comfortable boarding-place in the lower part of the city. She worked +at the shop, and left Franky during the day with her landlady, a +kind-hearted but poor woman. Her earnings were but three dollars a week, +and their board was two and a quarter; but on the balance she contrived +to furnish herself and her child with clothes. The only luxury she +indulged in was an occasional <i>walk</i>, on Sunday to Bloomingdale, to see +her good friend the kind-hearted matron.</p> + +<p>Thus things went on for two years; and if not happy, she was at least +comfortable. Her father never relented; but her aunt wrote her often, +and there was comfort in the thought that, at least, one of her early +friends had not cast her off. The good lady, too, sent her now and again +small remittances, but they came few and far between; for as the pious +woman grew older, her heart gradually returned to its first love—the +poor heathen.</p> + +<p>To Kate Russell Fanny wrote as soon she left the asylum, telling her of +all that had happened as far as she knew, and thanking her for all her +goodness and kindness to her. She waited some weeks, but no answer came; +then she wrote again, but still no answer came, though that time she +waited two or three months. Fearing then that something had befallen +her, she mustered courage to write Mr. Russell. Still she got no reply, +and she reluctantly concluded—though she had not asked them for +aid—that they had ceased to feel interested in her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span></p> + +<p>'They had not, madam. Kate has often spoken very kindly of you. She +wanted to come here to-day, but I did not know this, and I could not +bring her <i>here</i>!'</p> + +<p>She looked at me with a strange surprise. Her eyes lighted, and her face +beamed, as she said: 'And you know <i>her</i>, too!'</p> + +<p>'Know her! She is to be my wife very soon.'</p> + +<p>She wept as she said: 'And you will tell her how much I love her—how +grateful I am to her?'</p> + +<p>'I will,' I replied. I did not tell the poor girl, as I might have done, +that Hallet had at that time access to Mr. Russell's mails, and that, +knowing her hand-writing, he had undoubtedly intercepted her letters.</p> + +<p>After a long pause, she resumed her story.</p> + +<p>At the end of those two years, a financial panic swept over the country, +prostrating the great houses, and sending want and suffering into the +attics—not homes, for they have none—of the poor sewing-women. The +firm that employed her failed, and Fanny was thrown out of work. She +went to her good friend the matron, who interested some 'benevolent' +ladies in her behalf, and they procured her shirts to make at +twenty-five cents apiece! She could hardly do enough of them to pay her +board; but she could do the work at home with Franky, and that was a +comfort, for he was growing to be a bright, intelligent, affectionate +boy.</p> + +<p>About this time, her aunt and the good matron died. She mourned for them +sincerely, for they were all the friends she had.</p> + +<p>The severe times affected her landlady. Being unable to pay her rent, +she was sold out by the sheriff, and Fanny had to seek other lodgings. +She then took a little room by herself, and lived alone.</p> + +<p>The death of the matron was a great calamity to her, for her +'benevolent' friends soon lost interest in her, and took from her the +poor privilege of making shirts at twenty-five cents apiece! When this +befell her, she had but four dollars and twenty cents in the world. This +she made furnish food to herself and her child for four long weeks, +while she vainly sought for work. She offered to do any thing—to sew, +scrub, cook, wash—any thing; but no! there was nothing for +her—NOTHING! She must drain the cup to the very dregs, that the +vengeance of God—and He would not be just if He did not take terrible +vengeance for crime like his—might sink John Hallet to the lowest hell!</p> + +<p>For four days she had not tasted food. Her child was sick. She had +<i>begged</i> a few crumbs for him, but even <i>he</i> had eaten nothing all day. +Then the tempter came, and—why need I say it?—she sinned. Turn not +away from her, O you, her sister, who have never known a want or felt a +woe! Turn not away. It was not for herself; she would have died—gladly +have died! It was for her sick, starving child that she did it. Could +she, <i>should</i> she have seen him STARVE?</p> + +<p>Some months after that, she noticed in the evening paper, among the +arrivals at the Astor House, the name of John Hallet. That night she +went to him. She was shown to his room, and rapping at the door, was +asked to 'walk in.' She stepped inside and stood before him. He sprang +from his seat, and told her to leave him. She begged him to hear +her—for only one moment to hear her. He stamped on the floor in his +rage, and told her again to go! She did not go, for she told him of the +pit of infamy into which she had fallen, and she prayed him, as he hoped +for heaven, as he loved his own child, to save her! Then, with terrible +curses, he opened the door, laid his hands upon her, and—thrust her +from the room!</p> + +<p>Why should I tell how, step by step, she went down; how want came upon +her; how a terrible disease fastened its fangs on her vitals; how Death +walked with her up and down Broadway in the gas-light; how, in her very +hours of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> shame, there came to her visions of the innocent +past—thoughts of what she MIGHT HAVE BEEN and of what SHE WAS? The mere +recital of such misery harrows the very soul; and, O God! what must be +the REALITY!</p> + +<p>As she finished the tale which, in broken sentences, with long pauses +and many tears, she had given me, I rose from my seat, and pacing the +room, while the hot tears ran from my eyes, I said; 'Rest easy, my poor +girl! As sure as God lives, you shall be avenged. John Hallet shall feel +the misery he has made you feel. I will pull him down—down so low, that +the very beggars shall hoot at him in the streets!'</p> + +<p>'Oh! no; do not harm him! Leave him to God. He may yet repent!'</p> + +<p>The long exertion had exhausted her. The desire to tell me her story had +sustained her; but when she had finished, she sank rapidly. I felt of +her pulse—it scarcely beat; I passed my hand up her arm—it was icy +cold to the elbow! She was indeed dying. Giving her some of the cordial, +I called her child.</p> + +<p>When I returned, she took each of us by the hand, and said to Franky: +'My child—your mother is going away—from you. Be a good boy—love this +gentleman—he will take care of you!' Then to me she said: 'Be kind to +him, sir. He is—a good child!'</p> + +<p>'Have comfort, madam, he shall be my son. Kate will be a mother to him!'</p> + +<p>'Bless you! bless her! A mother's blessing—will be on you both! The +blessing of God—will be on you—and if the dead can come back—to +comfort those they love—I will come back—and comfort <i>you</i>!'</p> + +<p>I do not know—I can not know till the veil which hides her world from +ours, is lifted from my eyes, but there have been times—many +times—since she said that, when Kate and I have thought she was KEEPING +HER WORD!</p> + +<p>For a half-hour she lay without speaking, still holding our hands in +hers. Then, in a low tone—so low that I had to bend down to hear—she +said:</p> + +<p>'Oh! is it not beautiful! Don't you hear? And look! oh! look! And my +mother, too! Oh! it is too bright for such as I!'</p> + +<p>The heavenly gates had opened to her! She had caught a vision of the +better land!</p> + +<p>In a moment she said:</p> + +<p>'Farewell my friend—my child—I will come——' Then a low sound +rattled in her throat, and she passed away, just as the last rays of the +winter sun streamed through the low window. One of its bright beams +rested on her face, and lingered there till we laid her away forever.</p> + +<p>And now, as I sit with Kate on this grassy mound, this mild summer +afternoon, and write these lines, we talk together of her short, sad +life, of her calm, peaceful death, and floating down through the long +years, comes to us the blessing of her pure, redeemed spirit, pleasant +as the breath of the flowers that are growing on her grave. We look up, +and, through our thick falling tears, read again the words which we +placed over her in the long ago:</p> + + + <h3>FRANCES MANDELL:</h3> + + <h4>Aged 23.</h4> + + <h4>SHE SUFFERED AND SHE DIED.</h4> + + <h4>WEEP FOR HER.</h4> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="TAKE_CARE" id="TAKE_CARE"></a>TAKE CARE!</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">When the blades of shears are biting,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Finger not their edges keen;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When man and wife are fighting,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">He faces ill who comes between.<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">John Bull</span>, in our grief delighting,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Take care how you intervene!<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span></div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="SHOULDER-STRAPS" id="SHOULDER-STRAPS"></a>SHOULDER-STRAPS;</h2> + +<h3><span class="smcap">Or</span>, MEN, MANNERS, AND MOTIVES IN 1862.</h3> + + +<h4><a name="CHAPTER_IA" id="CHAPTER_IA"></a>CHAPTER I.</h4> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>INTRODUCTORY AND EPISODICAL—MEASURING-WORMS, DUSSELDORF PICTURES, +AND PARISIAN FORTUNE-TELLERS.</p></div> + +<p>This is going to be an odd jumble.</p> + +<p>Without being an odd jumble, it could not possibly reflect American life +and manners at the present time with any degree of fidelity; for the +foundations of the old in society have been broken up as effectually, +within the past two years, as were those of the great deep at the time +of Noah's flood, and the disruption has not taken place long enough ago +for the new to have assumed any appearance of stability. The old deities +of fashion have been swept away in the flood of revolution, and the new +which are eventually to take their place have scarcely yet made +themselves apparent through the general confusion. The millionaire of +two years ago, intent at that time on the means by which the revenues +from his brown-stone houses and pet railroad stocks could be spent to +the most showy advantage, has become the struggling man of to-day, +intent upon keeping up appearances, and happy if diminished and doubtful +rents can even be made to meet increasing taxes. The struggling man of +that time has meanwhile sprung into fortune and position, through lucky +adventures in government transportations or army contracts; and the +jewelers of Broadway and Chestnut street are busy resetting the diamonds +of decayed families, to sparkle on brows and bosoms that only a little +while ago beat with pride at an added weight of California paste or +Kentucky rock-crystal. The most showy equipages that have this year been +flashing at Newport and Saratoga, were never seen between the +bathing-beach and Fort Adams, or between Congress Spring and the Lake, +in the old days; and if opera should ever revive, and the rich notes of +melody repay the <i>impresario</i>, as they enrapture the audience at the +Academy, there will be new faces in the most prominent boxes, almost as +<i>outre</i> and unaccustomed in their appearance there as was that of the +hard-featured Western President, framed in a shock head and a turn-down +collar, meeting the gaze of astonished Murray Hill, when he passed an +hour here on his way to the inauguration.</p> + +<p>Quite as notable a change has taken place in personal reputation. Many +of the men on whom the country depended as most likely to prove able +defenders in the day of need, have not only discovered to the world +their worthlessness, but filled up the fable of the man who leaned upon +a reed, by fatally piercing those whom they had betrayed to their fall. +Bubble-characters have burst, and high-sounding phrases have been +exploded. Men whose education and antecedents should have made them +brave and true, have shown themselves false and cowardly—impotent for +good, and active only for evil. Unconsidered nobodies have meanwhile +sprung forth from the mass of the people, and equally astonished +themselves and others by the power, wisdom and courage they have +displayed. In cabinet and camp, in army and navy, in the editorial chair +and in the halls of eloquence, the men from whom least was expected have +done most, and those upon whom the greatest expectations had been +founded have only given another proof of the fallacy of all human +calculations. All has been change, all has been transition, in the +estimation men have held of themselves, and the light in which they +presented themselves to each other.</p> + +<p>Opinions of duties and recognitions of necessities have known a change +not less remarkable. What yesterday we believed to be fallacy, to-day we +know to be truth. What seemed the fixed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> and immutable purpose of God +only a few short months ago, we have already discovered to have been +founded only in human passion or ambition. What seemed eternal has +passed away, and what appeared to be evanescent has assumed stability. +The storm has been raging around us, and doing its work not the less +destructively because we failed to perceive that we were passing through +any thing more threatening than a summer shower. While we have stood +upon the bank of the swelling river, and pointed to some structure of +old rising on the bank, declaring that not a stone could be moved until +the very heavens should fall, little by little the foundations have been +undermined, and the full crash of its falling has first awoke us from +our security. That without which we said that the nation could not live, +has fallen and been destroyed; and yet the nation does not die, but +gives promise of a better and more enduring life. What we cherished we +have lost; what we did not ask or expect has come to us; the effete old +is passing away, and out of the ashes of its decay is springing forth +the young and vigorous new. Change, transition, every where and in all +things: how can society fail to be disrupted, and who can speak, write, +or think with the calm decorum of by-gone days?</p> + +<p>All this is obtrusively philosophical, of course, and correspondingly +out of place. But it may serve as a sort of forlorn hope—mental food +for powder—while the narrative reserve is brought forward; and there is +a dim impression on the mind of the writer that it may be found to have +some connection with that which is necessarily to follow.</p> + +<p>So let the odd jumble be prepared, perhaps with ingredients as +incongruous as those which at present compose what we used to call the +republic, and as unevenly distributed as have been honors and emoluments +during a struggle which should have found every man in his place, and +every national energy employed to its best purpose.</p> + +<p>I was crossing the City Hall Park to dinner at Delmonico's, one +afternoon early in July, in company with a friend who had spent some +years in Europe, and only recently returned. He may be called Ned +Martin, for the purposes of this narration. He had left the country in +its days of peace and prosperity, a frank, whole-souled young artist, +his blue eyes clear as the day, and his faith in humanity unbounded. He +had resided for a long time at Paris, and at other periods been +sojourning at Rome, Florence, Vienna, Dusseldorf, and other places where +art studies called him or artist company invited him. He had come back +to his home and country after the great movements of the war were +inaugurated, and when the great change which had been initiated was most +obvious to an observing eye. I had heard of his arrival in New York, but +failed to meet him, and not long after heard that he had gone down to +visit the lines of our army on the Potomac. Then I had heard of his +return some weeks after, and eventually I had happened upon him drinking +a good-will glass with a party of friends at one of the popular +down-town saloons, when stepping in for a post-prandial cigar. The +result of that meeting had been a promise that we would dine together +one evening, and the after-result was, that we were crossing the Park to +keep that promise.</p> + +<p>I have said that Ned Martin left this country a frank, blue-eyed, +happy-looking young artist, who seemed to be without a care or a +suspicion. It had only needed a second glance at his face, on the day +when I first met him at the bar of the drinking-saloon, to know that a +great change had fallen upon him. He was yet too young for age to have +left a single furrow upon his face; not a fleck of silver had yet +touched his brown hair, nor had his fine, erect form been bowed by +either over-labor or dissipation. Yet he was changed, and the second +glance showed that the change was in the <i>eyes</i>. Amid the clear blue +there lay a dark, sombre shadow, such as only shows itself in eyes that +have been turned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> <i>inward</i>. We usually say of the wearer of such eyes, +after looking into them a moment, 'That man has studied much;' 'has +suffered much;' or, '<i>he is a spiritualist</i>.' By the latter expression, +we mean that he looks more or less beneath the surface of events that +meet him in the world—that he is more or less a student of the +spiritual in mentality, and of the supernatural in cause and effect. +Such eyes do not stare, they merely gaze. When they look at you, they +look at something else through you and behind you, of which you may or +may not be a part.</p> + +<p>Let me say here, (this chapter being professedly episodical,) that the +painter who can succeed in transferring to canvas that expression of +<i>seeing more than is presented to the physical eye</i>, has achieved a +triumph over great difficulties. Frequent visitors to the old Dusseldorf +Gallery will remember two instances, perhaps by the same painter, of the +eye being thus made to reveal the inner thought and a life beyond that +passing at the moment. The first and most notable is in the 'Charles the +Second Fleeing from the Battle of Worcester.' The king and two nobles +are in the immediate foreground, in flight, while far away the sun is +going down in a red glare behind the smoke of battle, the lurid flames +of the burning town, and the royal standard just fluttering down from +the battlements of a castle lost by the royal arms at the very close of +Cromwell's 'crowning mercy.' Through the smoke of the middle distance +can be dimly seen dusky forms in flight, or in the last hopeless +conflict. Each of the nobles at the side of the fugitive king is heavily +armed, with sword in hand, mounted on heavy, galloping horses going at +high speed; and each is looking out anxiously, with head turned aside as +he flies, for any danger which may menace—not himself, but the +sovereign. Charles Stuart, riding between them, is mounted upon a dark, +high-stepping, pure-blooded English horse. He wears the peaked hat of +the time, and his long hair—that which afterward became so notorious in +the masks and orgies of Whitehall, and in the prosecution of his amours +in the purlieus of the capital—floats out in wild dishevelment from his +shoulders. He is dressed in the dark velvet, short cloak, and broad, +pointed collar peculiar to pictures of himself and his unfortunate +father; shows no weapon, and is leaning ungracefully forward, as if +outstripping the hard-trotting speed of his horse. But the true interest +of this figure, and of the whole picture, is concentrated in the eyes. +Those sad, dark eyes, steady and immovable in their fixed gaze, reveal +whole pages of history and whole years of suffering. The fugitive king +is not thinking of his flight, of any dangers that may beset him, of the +companions at his side, or even of where he shall lay his periled head +in the night that is coming. Those eyes have shut away the physical and +the real, and through the mists of the future they are trying to read +the great question of <i>fate</i>! Worcester is lost, and with it a kingdom: +is he to be henceforth a crownless king and a hunted fugitive, or has +the future its compensations? This is what the fixed and glassy eyes are +saying to every beholder, and there is not one who does not answer the +question with a mental response forced by that mute appeal of suffering +thought: 'The king shall have his own again!'</p> + +<p>The second picture in the same collection is much smaller, and commands +less attention; but it tells another story of the same great struggle +between King and Parliament, through the agency of the same feature. A +wounded cavalier, accompanied by one of his retainers, also wounded, is +being forced along on foot, evidently to imprisonment, by one of +Cromwell's Ironsides and a long-faced, high-hatted Puritan cavalry-man, +both on horseback, and a third on foot, with <i>musquetoon</i> on shoulder. +The cavalier's garments are rent and blood-stained, and there is a +bloody handkerchief binding his brow and telling how, when his house was +surprised and his dependents slaughtered, he himself fought till he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span> was +struck down, bound and overpowered. He strides sullenly along, looking +neither to the right nor the left; and the triumphant captors behind him +know nothing of the story that is told in his face. The eyes, fixed and +steady in the shadow of the bloody bandage, tell nothing of the pain of +his wound or the tension of the cords which are binding his crossed +wrists. In their intense depth, which really seems to convey the +impression of looking through forty feet of the still but dangerous +waters of Lake George and seeing the glimmering of the golden sand +beneath, we read of a burned house and an outraged family, and we see a +prophecy written there, that if his mounted guards could read, they +would set spurs and flee away like the wind—a calm, silent, but +irrevocable prophecy: 'I can bear all this, for my time is coming! Not a +man of all these will live, not a roof-tree that shelters them but will +be in ashes, when I take my revenge!' Not a gazer but knows, through +those marvelous eyes alone, that the day is coming that he <i>will</i> have +his revenge, and that the subject of pity is the victorious Roundhead +instead of the wounded and captive cavalier!</p> + +<p>I said, before this long digression broke the slender chain of +narration, that some strange, spiritualistic shadow lay in the eyes of +Ned Martin; and I could have sworn, without the possibility of an error, +that he had become an habitual reader of the inner life, and almost +beyond question a communicant with influences which some hold to be +impossible and others unlawful.</p> + +<p>The long measuring-worms hung pendent from their gossamer threads, as we +passed through the Park, as they have done, destroying the foliage, in +almost every city of the Northern States. One brushed my face as I +passed, and with the stick in my hand I struck the long threads of +gossamer and swept several of the worms to the ground. One, a very large +and long one, happened to fall on Martin's shoulder, lying across the +blue flannel of his coat in the exact position of a shoulder-strap.</p> + +<p>'I say, Martin,' I said, 'I have knocked down one of the worms upon +<i>you</i>.'</p> + +<p>'Have you?' he replied listlessly, 'then be good enough to brush it off, +if it does not crawl off itself. I do not like worms.'</p> + +<p>'I do not know who <i>does</i> like them,' I said, 'though I suppose, being +'worms of the dust,' we ought to bear affection instead of disgust +toward our fellow-reptiles. But, funnily enough,' and I held him still +by the shoulder for a moment to contemplate the oddity, 'this +measuring-worm, which is a very big one, has fallen on your shoulder, +and seems disposed to remain there, in the very position of a +<i>shoulder-strap</i>! You must belong to the army!'</p> + +<p>It is easy to imagine what would be the quick, convulsive writhing +motion with which one would shrink aside and endeavor to get +instantaneously away from it, when told that an asp, a centipede or a +young rattlesnake was lying on the shoulder, and ready to strike its +deadly fangs into the neck. But it is not easy to imagine that even a +nervous woman, afraid of a cockroach and habitually screaming at a +mouse, would display any extraordinary emotion on being told that a +harmless measuring-worm had fallen upon the shoulder of her dress. What +was my surprise, then, to see the face of Martin, that had been so +impassive the moment before when told that the worm had fallen upon his +coat, suddenly assume an expression of the most awful fear and agony, +and his whole form writhe with emotion, as he shrunk to one side in the +effort to eject the intruder instantaneously!</p> + +<p>'Good God! Off with it—quick! Quick, for heaven's sake!' he cried, in a +frightened, husky voice that communicated his terror to me, and almost +sinking to the ground as he spoke.</p> + +<p>Of course I instantly brushed the little reptile away; but it was quite +a moment before he assumed an erect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> position, and I saw two or three +quick shudders pass over his frame, such as I had not seen since, many a +long year before, I witnessed the horrible tortures of a strong man +stricken with hydrophobia. Then he asked, in a voice low, quavering and +broken:</p> + +<p>'Is it gone?'</p> + +<p>'Certainly it is!' I said. 'Why, Martin, what under heaven can have +affected you in this manner? I told you that I had knocked a worm on +your coat, and you did not appear to heed it any more than if it had +been a speck of dust. It was only when I mentioned the <i>shape</i> it had +assumed, that you behaved so unaccountably! What does it mean? Are you +afraid of worms, or only of <i>shoulder-straps</i>?' And I laughed at the +absurdity of the latter supposition.</p> + +<p>'Humph!' said Martin, who seemed to have recovered his equanimity, but +not shaken off the impression. 'You laugh. Perhaps you will laugh more +when I tell you that it was not the worm, <i>as</i> a worm, of which I was +thinking at all, and that my terror—yes, I need not mince words, I was +for the moment in abject terror—had to do altogether with the shape +that little crawling pest had assumed, and the part of my coat on which +he had taken a fancy to lodge himself!'</p> + +<p>'No, I should not laugh,' I said; 'but I <i>should</i> ask an explanation of +what seems very strange and unaccountable. Shall I lacerate a feeling, +or tread upon ground made sacred by a grief, if I do so?'</p> + +<p>'Not at all,' was the reply. 'In fact, I feel at this moment very much +as the Ancient Mariner may have done the moment before he met the +wedding-guest—when, in fact, he had nobody to button-hole, and felt the +strong necessity of boring some one!' There was a tone of gayety in this +reply, which told me how changeable and mercurial my companion could be; +and I read an evident understanding of the character and mission of the +noun-substantive 'bore,' which assured me that he was the last person in +the world likely to play such a part. 'However,' he concluded, 'wait a +bit. When we have concluded the raspberries, and wet our lips with +green-seal, I will tell you all that I myself know of a very singular +episode in an odd life.'</p> + +<p>Half an hour after, the conditions of which he spoke had been +accomplished, over the marble at Delmonico's, and he made me the +following very singular relation:</p> + +<p>'I had returned from a somewhat prolonged stay at Vienna,' he said, 'to +Paris, late in 1860. During the fall and winter of that year I spent a +good deal of time at the Louvre, making a few studies, and satisfying +myself as to some identities that had been called in question during my +rambles through the Imperial Gallery at Vienna. I lodged in the little +Rue Marie Stuart, not far from the Rue Montorgeuil, and only two or +three minutes' walk from the Louvre, having a baker with a pretty wife +for my landlord, and a cozy little room in which three persons could sit +comfortably, for my domicil. As I did not often have more than two +visitors, my room was quite sufficient; and as I spent a large +proportion of my evenings at other places than my lodgings, the space +was three quarters of the time more than I needed.</p> + +<p>'I do not know that I can have any objection to your knowing, before I +go any further, that I am and have been for some years a believer in +that of which Hamlet speaks when he says: 'There are more things in +heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.' You +may call me a <i>Spiritualist</i>, if you like, for I have no reverence for +or aversion to names. I do not call <i>myself</i> so; I only say that I +believe that more things come to us in the way of knowledge, than we +read, hear, see, taste, smell, or feel with the natural and physical +organs. I know, from the most irrefragable testimony, that there are +communications made between one and another, when too far apart to reach +each other by any of the recognized modes of intercourse; though how or +why they are made I have no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> definite knowledge. Electricity—that +'tongs with which God holds the world'—as a strong but odd thinker once +said in my presence, may be the medium of communication; but even this +must be informed by a living and sentient spirit, or it can convey +nothing. People learn what they would not otherwise know, through +mediums which they do not recognize and by processes which they can not +explain; and to know this is to have left the beaten track of old +beliefs, and plunged into a maze of speculation, which probably makes +madmen of a hundred while it is making a wise man of <i>one</i>. But I am +wandering too far and telling you nothing.</p> + +<p>'One of my few intimates in Paris, a young Prussian by the name of +Adolph Von Berg, had a habit of visiting mediums, clairvoyants, and, not +to put too fine a point upon it, fortune-tellers. Though I had been in +company with clairvoyants in many instances, I had never, before my +return to Paris in the late summer of 1860, entered any one of those +places in which professional fortune-tellers carried on their business. +It was early in September, I think, that at the earnest solicitation of +Von Berg, who had been reading and smoking with me at my lodgings, I +went with him, late in the evening, to a small two-story house in the +Rue La Reynie Ogniard, a little street down the Rue Saint Denis toward +the quays of the Seine, and running from Saint Denis across to the Rue +Saint Martin. The house seemed to me to be one of the oldest in Paris, +although built of wood; and the wrinkled and crazy appearance of the +front was eminently suggestive of the face of an old woman on which time +had long been plowing furrows to plant disease. The interior of the +house, when we entered it by the dingy and narrow hallway, that night, +well corresponded with the exterior. A tallow-candle in a tin sconce was +burning on the wall, half hiding and half revealing the grime on the +plastering, the cobwebs in the corners, and the rickety stairs by which +it might be supposed that the occupants ascended to the second story.</p> + +<p>'My companion tinkled a small bell that lay upon a little uncovered +table in the hall, (the outer door having been entirely unfastened, to +all appearance,) and a slattern girl came out from an inner room. On +recognizing my companion, who had visited the house before, she led the +way without a word to the same room she had herself just quitted. There +was nothing remarkable in this. A shabby table, and two or three still +more shabby chairs, occupied the room, and a dark wax-taper stood on the +table, while at the side opposite the single window a curtain of some +dark stuff shut in almost one entire side of the apartment. We took +seats on the rickety chairs, and waited in silence, Adolph informing me +that the etiquette (strange name for such a place) of the house did not +allow of conversation, not with the proprietors, carried on in that +apartment sacred to the divine mysteries.</p> + +<p>'Perhaps fifteen minutes had elapsed, and I had grown fearfully tired of +waiting, when the corner of the curtain was suddenly thrown back, and +the figure of a woman stood in the space thus created. Every thing +behind her seemed to be in darkness; but some description of bright +light, which did not show through the curtain at all, and which seemed +almost dazzling enough to be Calcium or Drummond, shed its rays directly +upon her side-face, throwing every feature from brow to chin into bold +relief, and making every fold of her dark dress visible. But I scarcely +saw the dress, the face being so remarkable beyond any thing I had ever +witnessed. I had looked to see an old, wrinkled hag—it being the +general understanding that all witches and fortune-tellers must be long +past the noon of life; but instead, I saw a woman who could not have +been over thirty-five or forty, with a figure of regal magnificence, and +a face that would have been, but for one circumstance, beautiful beyond +description. Apelles never drew and Phidias never chiseled nose or brow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> +of more classic perfection, and I have never seen the bow of Cupid in +the mouth of any woman more ravishingly shown than in that feature of +the countenance of the sorceress.</p> + +<p>'I said that but for one circumstance, that face would have been +beautiful beyond description. And yet no human eye ever looked upon a +face more hideously fearful than it was in reality. Even a momentary +glance could not be cast upon it without a shudder, and a longer gaze +involved a species of horrible fascination which affected one like a +nightmare. You do not understand yet what was this remarkable and most +hideous feature. I can scarcely find words to describe it to you so that +you can catch the full force of the idea—I must try, however. You have +often seen Mephistopheles in his flame-colored dress, and caught some +kind of impression that the face was of the same hue, though the fact +was that it was of the natural color, and only affected by the lurid +character of the dress and by the Satanic penciling of the eyebrows! You +have? Well, this face was really what that seemed for the moment to be. +It was redder than blood-red as fire, and yet so strangely did the +flame-color play through it that you knew no paint laid upon the skin +could have produced the effect. It almost seemed that the skin and the +whole mass of flesh were transparent, and that the red color came from +some kind of fire or light within, as the red bottle in a druggist's +window might glow when you were standing full in front of it, and the +gas was turned on to full height behind. Every feature—brow, nose, +lips, chin, even the eyes themselves, and their very pupil seemed to be +pervaded and permeated by this lurid flame; and it was impossible for +the beholder to avoid asking himself whether there were indeed spirits +of flame—salamandrines—who sometimes existed out of their own element +and lived and moved as mortals.</p> + +<p>'Have I given you a strange and fearful picture? Be sure that I have not +conveyed to you one thousandth part of the impression made upon myself, +and that until the day I die that strange apparition will remain stamped +upon the tablets of my mind. Diabolical beauty! infernal ugliness!—I +would give half my life, be it longer or shorter, to be able to explain +whence such things can come, to confound and stupefy all human +calculation!'</p> + + +<h4><a name="CHAPTER_IIA" id="CHAPTER_IIA"></a>CHAPTER II.</h4> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>MORE OF PARISIAN FORTUNE-TELLERS—THE VISIONS OF THE WHITE +MIST—REBELLION, GRIEF, HOPE, BRAVERY AND DESPAIR</p></div> + +<p>It was after a second bottle of green-seal had flashed out its sparkles +into the crystal, that Ned Martin drew a long breath like that drawn by +a man discharging a painful and necessary duty, and resumed his story:</p> + +<p>'You may some time record this for the benefit of American men and +women,' he went on, 'and if you are wise you will deal chiefly in the +language to which they are accustomed. I speak the French, of course, +nearly as well and as readily as the English; but I <i>think</i> in my native +tongue, as most men continue to do, I believe, no matter how many +dialects they acquire; and I shall not interlard this little narrative +with any French words that can just as well be translated into our +vernacular.</p> + +<p>'Well, as I was saying, there stood my horribly beautiful fiend, and +there I sat spell-bound before her. As for Adolph, though he had told me +nothing in advance of the peculiarities of her appearance, he had been +fully aware of them, of course, and I had the horrible surprise all to +myself. I think the sorceress saw the mingled feeling in my face, and +that a smile blended of pride and contempt contorted the proud features +and made the ghastly face yet more ghastly for one moment. If so, the +expression soon passed away, and she stood, as before, the incarnation +of all that was terrible and mysterious. At length, still retaining her +place and fixing her eyes upon Von Berg, she spoke, sharply, brusquely, +and decidedly:</p> + +<p>''You are here again! What do you want?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span></p> + +<p>''I wish to introduce my friend, the Baron Charles Denmore, of England,' +answered Von Berg, 'who wishes——'</p> + +<p>''Nothing!' said the sorceress, the word coming from her lips with an +unmistakably hissing sound. He wants nothing, and he is <i>not</i> the Baron +Charles Denmore! He comes from far away, across the sea, and he would +not have come here to-night but that you insisted upon it! Take him +away—go away yourself—and never let me see you again unless you have +something to ask or you wish me to do you an injury!'</p> + +<p>''But——' began Yon Berg.</p> + +<p>''Not another word!' said the sorceress, 'I have said. Go, before you +repent having come at all!'</p> + +<p>''Madame,' I began to say, awed out of the feeling at least of equality +which I should have felt to be proper under such circumstances, and only +aware that Adolph, and possibly myself, had incurred the enmity of a +being so near to the supernatural as to be at least dangerous—'Madame, +I hope that you will not think——'</p> + +<p>'But here she cut <i>me</i> short, as she had done Von Berg the instant +before.</p> + +<p>''Hope nothing, young artist!' she said, her voice perceptibly less +harsh and brusque than it had been when speaking to my companion. 'Hope +nothing and ask nothing until you may have occasion; then come to me.'</p> + +<p>''And then?'</p> + +<p>''Then I will answer every question you may think proper to put to me. +Stay! you may have occasion to visit me sooner than you suppose, or I +may have occasion to force knowledge upon you that you will not have the +boldness to seek. If so, I shall send for you. Now go, both of you!'</p> + +<p>'The dark curtain suddenly fell, and the singular vision faded with the +reflected light which had filled the room. The moment after, I heard the +shuffling feet of the slattern girl coming to show us out of the room, +but, singularly enough, as you will think, not out of the <i>house</i>! +Without a word we followed her—Adolph, who knew the customs of the +place, merely slipping a five-franc piece into her hand, and in a moment +more we were out in the street and walking up the Rue Saint Denis. It is +not worth while to detail the conversation which followed between us as +we passed up to the Rue Marie Stuart, I to my lodgings and Adolph to his +own, further on, close to the Rue Vivienne, and not far from the +Boulevard Montmartre. Of course I asked him fifty questions, the replies +to which left me quite as much in the dark as before. He knew, he said, +and hundreds of other persons in Paris knew, the singularity of the +personal appearance of the sorceress, and her apparent power of +divination, but neither he nor they had any knowledge of her origin. He +had been introduced at her house several months before, and had asked +questions affecting his family in Prussia and the chances of descent of +certain property, the replies to which had astounded him. He had heard +of her using marvelous and fearful incantations, but had never himself +witnessed any thing of them. In two or three instances, before the +present, he had taken friends to the house and introduced them under any +name which he chose to apply to them for the time, and the sorceress had +never before chosen to call him to account for the deception, though, +according to the assurances of his friends after leaving the house, she +had never failed to arrive at the truth of their nationalities and +positions in life. There must have been something in myself or my +circumstances, he averred, which had produced so singular an effect upon +the witch, (as he evidently believed her to be,) and he had the +impression that at no distant day I should again hear from her. That was +all, and so we parted, I in any other condition of mind than that +promising sleep, and really without closing my eyes, except for a moment +or two at a time, during the night which followed. When I did attempt to +force myself into slumber, a red spectre stood continually before me, an +unearthly light seemed to sear my covered eyeballs, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> I awoke with a +start. Days passed before I sufficiently wore away the impression to be +comfortable, and at least two or three weeks before my rest became again +entirely unbroken.</p> + +<p>'You must be partially aware with what anxiety we Americans temporarily +sojourning on the other side of the Atlantic, who loved the country we +had left behind on this, watched the succession of events which preceded +and accompanied the Presidential election of that year. Some suppose +that a man loses his love for his native land, or finds it comparatively +chilled within his bosom, after long residence abroad. The very opposite +is the case, I think! I never knew what the old flag was, until I saw it +waving from the top of an American consulate abroad, or floating from +the gaff of one of our war-vessels, when I came down the mountains to +some port on the Mediterranean. It had been merely red, white and blue +bunting, at home, where the symbols of our national greatness were to be +seen on every hand: it was the <i>only</i> symbol of our national greatness +when we were looking at it from beyond the sea; and the man whose eyes +will not fill with tears and whose throat will not choke a little with +overpowering feeling, when catching sight of the Stars and Stripes where +they only can be seen to remind him of the glory of the country of which +he is a part, is unworthy the name of patriot or of man!</p> + +<p>'But to return: Where was I? Oh! I was remarking with what interest we +on the other side of the water watched the course of affairs at home +during that year when the rumble of distant thunder was just heralding +the storm. You are well aware that without extensive and long-continued +connivance on the part of sympathizers among the leading people of +Europe—England and France especially—secession could never have been +accomplished so far as it has been; and there never could have been any +hope of its eventual success if there had been no hope of one or both +these two countries bearing it up on their strong and unscrupulous arms. +The leaven of foreign aid to rebellion was working even then, both in +London and Paris; and perhaps we had opportunities over the water for a +nearer guess at the peril of the nation, than you could have had in the +midst of your party political squabbles at home.</p> + +<p>'During the months of September and October, when your Wide-Awakes on +the one hand, and your conservative Democracy on the other, were +parading the streets with banners and music, as they or their +predecessors had done in so many previous contests, and believing that +nothing worse could be involved than a possible party defeat and some +bad feelings, we, who lived where revolutions were common, thought that +we discovered the smoldering spark which would be blown to revolution +here. The disruption of the Charleston Convention and through it of the +Democracy; the bold language and firm resistance of the Republicans; the +well-understood energy of the uncompromising Abolitionists, and the less +defined but rabid energy of the Southern fire-eaters: all these were +known abroad and watched with gathering apprehension. American +newspapers, and the extracts made from them by the leading journals of +France and Europe, commanded more attention among the Americo-French and +English than all other excitements of the time put together.</p> + +<p>'Then followed what you all know—the election, with its radical result +and the threats which immediately succeeded, that 'Old Abe Lincoln' +should never live to be inaugurated! 'He shall not!' cried the South. +'He shall!' replied the North. To us who knew something of the Spanish +knife and the Italian stiletto, the probabilities seemed to be that he +would never live to reach Washington. Then the mutterings of the thunder +grew deeper and deeper, and some disruption seemed inevitable, evident +to us far away, while you at home, it seemed, were eating and drinking, +marrying and giving in marriage, holding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> gala-days and enjoying +yourselves generally, on the brink of an arousing volcano from which the +sulphurous smoke already began to ascend to the heavens! So time passed +on; autumn became winter, and December was rolling away.</p> + +<p>'I was sitting with half-a-dozen friends in the chess-room at Very's, +about eleven o'clock on the night of the twentieth of December, talking +over some of the marvelous successes which had been won by Paul Morphy +when in Paris, and the unenviable position in which Howard Staunton had +placed himself by keeping out of the lists through evident fear of the +New-Orleanian, when Adolph Von Berg came behind me and laid his hand on +my shoulder.</p> + +<p>''Come with me a moment,' he said, 'you are wanted!'</p> + +<p>''Where?' I asked, getting up from my seat and following him to the +door, before which stood a light <i>coupé</i>, with its red lights flashing, +the horse smoking, and the driver in his seat.</p> + +<p>''I have been to-night to the Rue la Reynie Ogniard!' he answered.</p> + +<p>''And are you going there again?' I asked, my blood chilling a little +with an indefinable sensation of terror, but a sense of satisfaction +predominating at the opportunity of seeing something more of the +mysterious woman.</p> + +<p>''I am!' he answered, 'and so are <i>you</i>! She has sent for you! Come!'</p> + +<p>'Without another word I stepped into the <i>coupé</i>, and we were rapidly +whirled away. I asked Adolph how and why I had been summoned; but he +knew nothing more than myself, except that he had visited the sorceress +at between nine and ten that evening, that she had only spoken to him +for an instant, but ordered him to go at once and find his friend, <i>the +American</i>, whom he had falsely introduced some months before as the +English baron. He had been irresistibly impressed with the necessity of +obedience, though it would break in upon his own arrangements for the +later evening, (which included an hour at the Chateau Rouge;) had picked +up a <i>coupé</i>, looked in for me at two or three places where he thought +me most likely to be at that hour in the evening, and had found me at +Very's, as related. What the sorceress could possibly want of me, he had +no idea more than myself; but he reminded me that she had hinted at the +possible necessity of sending for me at no distant period, and I +remembered the fact too well to need the reminder.</p> + +<p>'It was nearly midnight when we drove down the Rue St. Denis, turned +into La Reynie Ogniard, and drew up at the antiquated door I had once +entered nearly three months earlier. We entered as before, rang the bell +as before, and were admitted into the inner room by the same slattern +girl. I remember at this moment one impression which this person made +upon me—that she did not wash so often as four times a year, and that +the <i>same old dirt</i> was upon her face that had been crusted there at the +time of my previous visit. There seemed no change in the room, except +that <i>two</i> tapers, and each larger than the one I had previously seen, +were burning upon the table. The curtain was down, as before, and when +it suddenly rose, after a few minutes spent in waiting, and the +blood-red woman stood in the vacant space, all seemed so exactly as it +had done on the previous visit, that it would have been no difficult +matter to believe the past three months a mere imagination, and this the +same first visit renewed.</p> + +<p>'The illusion, such as it was, did not last long, however. The sorceress +fixed her eyes full upon me, with the red flame seeming to play through +the eyeballs as it had before done through her cheeks, and said, in a +voice lower, more sad and broken, than it had been when addressing me on +the previous occasion:</p> + +<p>''Young American, I have sent for you, and you have done well to come. +Do not fear——'</p> + +<p>''I do <i>not</i> fear—you, or any one!' I answered, a little piqued that +she should have drawn any such impression from my appearance. I may have +been uttering a fib of magnificent proportions at the moment, but one +has a right to deny<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> cowardice to the last gasp, whatever else he must +admit.</p> + +<p>''You do not? It is well, then!' she said in reply, and in the same low, +sad voice. 'You will have courage, then, perhaps, to see what I will +show you from the land of shadows.'</p> + +<p>''Whom does it concern?' I asked. 'Myself, or some other?'</p> + +<p>''Yourself, and many others—all the world!' uttered the lips of flame. +'It is of your country that I would show you.'</p> + +<p>''My country? God of heaven! What has happened to my country?' broke +from my lips almost before I knew what I was uttering. I suppose the +words came almost like a groan, for I had been deeply anxious over the +state of affairs known to exist at home, and perhaps I can be nearer to +a weeping child when I think of any ill to my own beloved land, than I +could be for any other evil threatened in the world.</p> + +<p>''But a moment more and you shall see!' said the sorceress. Then she +added: 'You have a friend here present. Shall he too look on what I have +to reveal, or will you behold it alone?'</p> + +<p>''Let him see!' I answered. 'My native land may fall into ruin, but she +can never be ashamed!'</p> + +<p>''So let it be, then!' said the sorceress, solemnly. 'Be silent, look, +and learn what is at this moment transpiring in your own land!'</p> + +<p>'Beneath that adjuration I was silent, and the same dread stillness fell +upon my companion. Suddenly the sorceress, still standing in the same +place, waved her right hand in the air, and a strain of low, sad music, +such as the harps of angels may be continually making over the descent +of lost spirits to the pit of suffering, broke upon my ears. Von Berg +too heard it, I know, for I saw him look up in surprise, then apply his +fingers to his ears and test whether his sense of hearing had suddenly +become defective. Whence that strain of music could have sprung I did +not know, nor do I know any better at this moment. I only know that, to +my senses and those of my companion, it was definite as if the thunders +of the sky had been ringing.</p> + +<p>'Then came another change, quite as startling as the music and even more +difficult to explain. The room began to fill with a whitish mist, +transparent in its obscurity, that wrapped the form of the sybil and +finally enveloped her until she appeared to be but a shade. Anon another +and larger room seemed to grow in the midst, with columned galleries and +a rostrum, and hundreds of forms in wild commotion, moving to and fro, +though uttering no sound. At one moment it seemed that I could look +through one of the windows of the phantom building, and I saw the +branches of a palmetto-tree waving in the winter wind. Then amidst and +apparently at the head of all, a white-haired man stood upon the +rostrum, and as he turned down a long scroll from which he seemed to be +reading to the assemblage, I read the words that appeared on the top of +the scroll: 'An ordinance to dissolve the compact heretofore existing +between the several States of the Federal Union, under the name of the +United States of America.' My breath came thick, my eyes filled with +tears of wonder and dismay, and I could see no more.</p> + +<p>''Horror!' I cried. 'Roll away the vision, for it is false! It can not +be that the man lives who could draw an ordinance to dissolve the Union +of the United States of America!'</p> + +<p>''It is so! That has this day been done!' spoke the voice of the +sorceress from within the cloud of white mist.</p> + +<p>''If this is indeed true,' I said, 'show me what is the result, for the +heavens must bow if this work of ruin is accomplished!'</p> + +<p>''Look again, then!' said the voice. The strain of music, which had +partially ceased for a moment, grew louder and sadder again, and I saw +the white mist rolling and changing as if a wind were stirring it. +Gradually again it assumed shape and form; and in the moonlight, before +the Capitol of the nation, its white proportions gleaming in the wintry +ray,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> the form of Washington stood, the hands clasped, the head bare, +and the eyes cast upward in the mute agony of supplication.</p> + +<p>''All is not lost!' I shouted more than spoke, 'for the Father of his +Country still watches his children, and while he lives in the heavens +and prays for the erring and wandering, the nation may yet be +reclaimed.'</p> + +<p>''It may be so,' said the voice through the mist, 'for look!'</p> + +<p>'Again the strain of music sounded, but now louder and clearer and +without the tone of hopeless sadness. Again the white mists rolled by in +changing forms, and when once more they assumed shape and consistency I +saw great masses of men, apparently in the streets of a large city, +throwing out the old flag from roof and steeple, lifting it to heaven in +attitudes of devotion, and pressing it to their lips with those wild +kisses which a mother gives to her darling child when it has been just +rescued from a deadly peril.</p> + +<p>''The nation lives!' I shouted. 'The old flag is not deserted and the +patriotic heart yet beats in American bosoms! Show me yet more, for the +next must be triumph!'</p> + +<p>''Triumph indeed!' said the voice. 'Behold it and rejoice at it while +there is time!' I shuddered at the closing words, but another change in +the strain of music roused me. It was not sadness now, nor yet the +rising voice of hope, for martial music rung loudly and clearly, and +through it I heard the roar of cannon and the cries of combatants in +battle. As the vision cleared, I saw the armies of the Union in tight +with a host almost as numerous as themselves, but savage, ragged, and +tumultuous, and bearing a mongrel flag that I had never seen before—one +that seemed robbed from the banner of the nation's glory. For a moment +the battle wavered and the forces of the Union seemed driven backward; +then they rallied with a shout, and the flag of stars and stripes was +rebaptized in glory. They pressed the traitors backward at every +turn—they trod rebellion under their heels—they were every where, and +every where triumphant.</p> + +<p>''Three cheers for the Star-Spangled Banner!' I cried, forgetting place +and time in the excitement of the scene. 'Let the world look on and +wonder and admire! I knew the land that the Fathers founded and +Washington guarded could not die! Three cheers—yes, nine—for the +Star-Spangled Banner and the brave old land over which it floats!'</p> + +<p>''Pause!' said the voice, coming out once more from the cloud of white +mist, and chilling my very marrow with the sad solemnity of its tone. +'Look once again!' I looked, and the mists went rolling by as before, +while the music changed to wild discord; and when the sight became clear +again I saw the men of the nation struggling over bags of gold and +quarreling for a black shadow that flitted about in their midst, while +cries of want and wails of despair went up and sickened the heavens! I +closed my eyes and tried to close my ears, but I could not shut out the +voice of the sorceress, saying once more from her shroud of white mist:</p> + +<p>''Look yet again, and for the last time! Behold the worm that gnaws away +the bravery of a nation and makes it a prey for the spoiler!' +Heart-brokenly sad was the music now, as the vision changed once more, +and I saw a great crowd of men, each in the uniform of an officer of the +United States army, clustered around one who seemed to be their chief. +But while I looked I saw one by one totter and fall, and directly I +perceived that <i>the epaulette or shoulder-strap on the shoulder of each +was a great hideous yellow worm, that gnawed away the shoulder and +palsied the arm and ate into the vitals</i>. Every second, one fell and +died, making frantic efforts to tear away the reptile from its grasp, +but in vain. Then the white mists rolled away, and I saw the strange +woman standing where she had been when the first vision began. She was +silent, the music was hushed, Adolph Von Berg had fallen hack asleep in +his chair, and drawing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> out my watch, I discovered that only ten minutes +had elapsed since the sorceress spoke her first word.</p> + +<p>''You have seen all—go!' was her first and last interruption to the +silence. The instant after, the curtain fell. I kicked Von Berg to awake +him, and we left the house. The <i>coupé</i> was waiting in the street and +set me down at my lodgings, after which it conveyed my companion to his. +Adolph did not seem to have a very clear idea of what had occurred, and +my impression is, that he went to sleep the moment the first strain of +music commenced.</p> + +<p>'As for myself, I am not much clearer than Adolph as to how and why I +saw and heard what I know that I did see and hear. I can only say that +on that night of the twentieth December, 1860, the same on which, as it +afterward appeared, the ordinance of secession was adopted at +Charleston, I, in the little old two-story house in the Rue la Reynie +Ogniard, witnessed what I have related. What may be the omens, you may +judge as well as myself. How much of the sybil's prophecy is already +history, you know already. That SHOULDER-STRAPS, which I take to be <i>the +desire of military show without courage or patriotism</i>, are destroying +the armies of the republic, I am afraid there is no question. Perhaps +you can imagine why at the moment of hearing that there was a worm on my +shoulder for a shoulder-strap, I for the instant believed that it was +one of the hideous yellow monsters that I saw devouring the best +officers of the nation, and shrunk and shrieked like a whipped child. Is +not that a long story?' Martin concluded, lighting a fresh cigar and +throwing himself back from the table.</p> + +<p>'Very long, and a little mad; but to me absorbingly interesting,' was my +reply, 'And in the hope that it may prove so to others, I shall use it +as a strange, rambling introduction to a recital of romantic events +which have occurred in and about the great city since the breaking out +of the rebellion, having to do with patriotism and cowardice, love, +mischief, and secession, and bearing the title thus suggested.'</p> + +<p>A part of which stipulation is hereby kept, with the promise of the +writer that the remainder shall be faithfully fulfilled in forthcoming +numbers.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_CHILDREN_IN_THE_WOOD" id="THE_CHILDREN_IN_THE_WOOD"></a>THE CHILDREN IN THE WOOD.</h2> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Tell us—poor gray-haired children that we are—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Tell us some story of the days afar,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Down shining through the years like sun and star.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The stories that, when we were very young,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like golden beads on lips of wisdom hung,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At fireside told or by the cradle sung.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Not Cinderella with the tiny shoe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor Harsan's carpet that through distance flew,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor Jack the Giant-Killer's derring-do.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Not even the little lady of the Hood,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But something sadder—easier understood—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The ballad of the Children in the Wood.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Poor babes! the cruel uncle lives again,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To whom their little voices plead in vain—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who sent them forth to be by ruffians slain.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The hapless agent of the guilt is here—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From whose seared heart their pleading brought a tear—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who could not strike, but fled away in fear.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And hand in hand the wanderers, left alone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Through the dense forest make their feeble moan,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fed on the berries—pillowed on a stone.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Still hand in hand, till little feet grow sore,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And fails the feeble strength their limbs that bore;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then they lie down, and feel the pangs no more.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The stars shine down in pity from the sky;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The night-bird marks their fate with plaintive cry;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The dew-drop wets their parched lips ere they die.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">There clasped they lie—death's poor, unripened sheaves—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till the red robin through the tree-top grieves,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And flutters down and covers them with leaves.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Tis an old legend, and a touching one:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What then? Methinks beneath to-morrow's sun<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Some deed as heartless will be planned and done.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Children of older years and sadder fate<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Will wander, outcasts, from the great world's gate,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And ne'er return again, though long they wait.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Through wildering labyrinths that round them close,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In that heart-hunger disappointment knows,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They long may wander ere the night's repose.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Their feeble voices through the dusk may call,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And on the ears of busy mortals fall,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But who will hear, save God above us all?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Will wolfish Hates forego their evil work,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor Envy's vultures in the branches perk,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor Slander's snakes within the verdure lurk?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And when at last the torch of life grows dim,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall sweet birds o'er them chant a burial-hymn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or decent pity veil the stiffening limb?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Thrice happy they, if the old legend stand,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And they are left to wander hand in hand—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not driven apart by Eden's blazing brand!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">If, long before the lonely night comes on—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By tempting berries wildered and withdrawn—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One does not look and find the other gone;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">If something more of shame, and grief, and wrong<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Than that so often told in nursery song,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To their sad history does not belong!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">O lonely wanderers in the great world's wood!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Finding the evil where you seek the good,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Often deceived and seldom understood—<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Lay to your hearts the plaintive tale of old,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When skies grow threatening or when loves grow cold,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or something dear is hid beneath the mold!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">For fates are hard, and hearts are very weak,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And roses we have kissed soon leave the cheek,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And what we are, we scarcely dare to speak.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But something deeper, to reflective eyes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To-day beneath the sad old story lies,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all must read if they are truly wise.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">A nation wanders in the deep, dark night,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By cruel hands despoiled of half its might,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And half its truest spirits sick with fright.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The world is step-dame—scoffing at the strife,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And black assassins, armed with deadly knife,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At every step lurk, striking at its life.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Shall it be murdered in the gloomy wood?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Tell us, O Parent of the True and Good,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose hand for us the fate has yet withstood!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Shall it lie down at last, all weak and faint,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Its blood dried up with treason's fever-taint,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And offer up its soul in said complaint?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Or shall the omen fail, and, rooting out<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All that has marked its life with fear and doubt,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The child spring up to manhood with a shout?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">So that in other days, when far and wide<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Other lost children have for succor cried,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The one now periled may be help and guide?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Father of all the nations formed of men,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So let it be! Hold us beneath thy ken,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And bring the wanderers to thyself again!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Pity us all, and give us strength to pray,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And lead us gently down our destined way!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And this is all the children's lips can say.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span></div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="NATIONAL_UNITY" id="NATIONAL_UNITY"></a>NATIONAL UNITY.</h2> + + +<p>Pride in the physical grandeur, the magnificent proportions of our +country, has for generations been the master passion of Americans. Never +has the popular voice or vote refused to sustain a policy which looked +to the enlargement of the area or increase of the power of the Republic. +To feel that so vast a river as the Mississippi, having such affluents +as the Missouri and the Ohio, rolled its course entirely through our +territory—that the twenty thousand miles of steamboat navigation on +that river and its tributaries were wholly our own, without touching on +any side our national boundaries—that the Pacific and the Atlantic, the +great lakes and the Gulf of Mexico, were our natural and conceded +frontiers, that their bays and harbors were the refuge of our commerce, +and their rising cities our marts and depots—were incense to our vanity +and stimulants to our love of country. No true American abroad ever +regarded or characterized himself as a New-Yorker, a Virginian, a +Louisianian: he dilated in the proud consciousness of his country's +transcendent growth and wondrous greatness, and confidently anticipated +the day when its flag should float unchallenged from Hudson's Bay to the +Isthmus of Darien, if not to Cape Horn.</p> + +<p>It was this strong instinct of Nationality which rendered the masses so +long tolerant, if not complaisant, toward Slavery and the Slave Power. +Merchants and bankers were bound to their footstool by other and +ignobler ties; but the yeomanry of the land regarded slavery with a +lenient if not absolutely favoring eye, because it existed in fifteen of +our States, and was cherished as of vital moment by nearly all of them, +so that any popular aversion to it evinced by the North, would tend to +weaken the bonds of our Union. It might <i>seem</i> hard to Pomp, or Sambo, +or Cuffee, to toil all day in the rice-swamp, the cotton-field, to the +music of the driver's lash, with no hope of remuneration or release, nor +even of working out thereby a happier destiny for his children; but +after all, what was the happiness or misery of three or four millions of +stupid, brutish negroes, that it should be allowed to weigh down the +greatness and glory of the Model Republic? Must there not always be a +foundation to every grand and towering structure? Must not some grovel +that others may soar? Is not <i>all</i> drudgery repulsive? Yet must it not +be performed? Are not negroes habitually enslaved by each other in +Africa? Does not their enslavement here secure an aggregate of labor and +production that would else be unattainable? Are we not enabled by it to +supply the world with Cotton and Tobacco and ourselves with Rice and +Sugar? In short, is not to toil on white men's plantations the negro's +true destiny, and Slavery the condition wherein he contributes most +sensibly, considerably, surely, to the general sustenance and comfort of +mankind? If it is, away with all your rigmarole declarations of 'the +inalienable Rights of Man'—the right of every one to life, liberty, and +the pursuit of happiness! Let us have a reformed and rationalized +political Bible, which shall affirm the equality of all <i>white</i> +men—<i>their</i> inalienable right to liberty, etc., etc. Thus will our +consistency be maintained, our institutions and usages stand justified, +while we still luxuriate on our home-grown sugar and rice, and deluge +the civilized world with our cheap cotton and tobacco!—And thus our +country—which had claimed a place in the family of nations as the +legitimate child and foremost champion of Human Freedom—was fast +sinking into the loathsome attitude of foremost champion and most +conspicuous exemplar of the vilest and most iniquitous form of +Despotism—that which robs the laborer of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> just recompense of his +sweat, and dooms him to a life of ignorance, squalor, and despair.</p> + +<p>But</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Make whips to scourge us.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>For two generations our people have cherished, justified, and pampered +slavery, not that they really loved, or conscientiously approved the +accursed 'institution,' but because they deemed its tolerance essential +to our National Unity; and now we find Slavery desperately intent on and +formidably armed for the destruction of that Unity: for two generations +we have aided the master to trample on and rob his despised slave; and +now we are about to call that slave to defend our National Unity against +that master's malignant treason, or submit to see our country shattered +and undone.</p> + +<p>Who can longer fail to realize that 'there is a God who judgeth in the +earth?' or, if the phraseology suit him better, that there is, in the +constitution of the universe, provision made for the banishment of every +injustice, the redress of every wrong?</p> + +<p>'Well,' says a late convert to the fundamental truth, 'we must drive the +negro race entirely from our country, or we shall never again have union +and lasting peace.'</p> + +<p>Ah! friend? it is not the negro <i>per se</i> who distracts and threatens to +destroy our country—far from it! Negroes did not wrest Texas from +Mexico, nor force her into the Union, nor threaten rebellion because +California was admitted as a Free State, nor pass the Nebraska bill, nor +stuff the ballot-boxes and burn the habitations of Kansas, nor fire on +Fort Sumter, nor do any thing else whereby our country has been +convulsed and brought to the brink of ruin. It is not by the negro—it +is by injustice to the negro—that our country has been brought to her +present deplorable condition. Were Slavery and all its evil brood of +wrongs and vices eradicated this day, the Rebellion would die out +to-morrow and never have a successor. The centripetal tendency of our +country is so intense—the attraction of every part for every other so +overwhelming—that Disunion were impossible but for Slavery. What +insanity in New-Orleans to seek a divorce from the upper waters of her +superb river! What a melancholy future must confront St. Louis, +separated by national barriers from Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Colorado, +Nebraska, and all the vast, undeveloped sources of her present as well +as prospective commerce and greatness! Ponder the madness of Baltimore, +seeking separation from that active and teeming West to which she has +laid an iron track over the Alleghanies at so heavy a cost! But for +Slavery, the Southron who should gravely propose disunion, would at once +be immured in a receptacle for lunatics. He would find no sympathy +elsewhere.</p> + +<p>But a nobler idea, a truer conception, of National Unity, is rapidly +gaining possession of the American mind. It is that dimly foreshadowed +by our President when, in his discussions with Senator Douglas, he said: +'I do not think our country can endure half slave and half free. I do +not think it will be divided, but I think it will become all one or the +other.'</p> + +<p>'A union of lakes, a union of lands,' is well; but a true 'union of +hearts' must be based on a substantial identity of social habitudes and +moral convictions. If Islamism or Mormonism were the accepted religion +of the South, and we were expected to bow to and render at least outward +deference to it, there would doubtless be thousands of Northern-born men +who, for the sake of office, or trade, or in the hope of marrying +Southern plantations, would profess the most unbounded faith in the +creed of the planters, and would crowd their favorite temples located on +our own soil. But this would not be a real bond of union between us, but +merely an exhibition of servility and fawning hypocrisy. And so the +Northern complaisance toward slavery has in no degree tended to avert +the disaster which has over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span>taken us, but only to breed self-reproach on +the one side, and hauteur with ineffable loathing on the other.</p> + +<p>Hereafter National Unity is to be no roseate fiction, no gainful +pretense, but a living reality. The United States of the future will be +no constrained alliance of discordant and mutually repellent +commonwealths, but a true exemplification of 'many in one'—many stars +blended in one common flag—many States combined in one homogeneous +Nation. Our Union will be one of bodies not merely, but of souls. The +merchant of Boston or New-York will visit Richmond or Louisville for +tobacco, Charleston for rice, Mobile for cotton, New-Orleans for sugar, +without being required at every hospitable board, in every friendly +circle, to repudiate the fundamental laws of right and wrong as he +learned them from his mother's lips, his father's Bible, and pronounce +the abject enslavement of a race to the interests and caprices of +another essentially just and universally beneficent. That a Northern man +visiting the South commercially should suppress his convictions adverse +to 'the peculiar institution,' and profess to regard it with approval +and satisfaction, was a part of the common law of trade—if one were +hostile to Slavery, what right had he to be currying favor with planters +and their factors, and seeking gain from the products of slave-labor? So +queried 'the South;' and, if any answer were possible, that answer would +not be heard. 'Love slavery or quit the South,' was the inexorable rule; +and the resulting hypocrisy has wrought deep injury to the Northern +character. As manufacturers, as traders, as teachers, as clerks, as +political aspirants, most of our active, enterprising, leading classes +have been suitors in some form for Southern favor, and the consequence +has been a prevalent deference to Southern ideas and a constant +sacrifice of moral convictions to hopes of material advantage.</p> + +<p>It has pleased God to bring this demoralizing commerce to a sudden and +sanguinary close. Henceforth North and South will meet as equals, +neither finding or fancying in their intimate relations any reason for +imposing a profession of faith on the other. The Southron visiting the +North and finding here any law, usage, or institution revolting to his +sense of justice, will never dream of offending by frankly avowing and +justifying the impression it has made upon him: and so with the Northman +visiting the South. It is conscious wrong alone that shrinks from +impartial observation and repels unfavorable criticism as hostility. We +freely proffer our farms, our factories, our warehouses, common-schools, +alms-houses, inns, and whatever else may be deemed peculiar among us, to +our visitors' scrutiny and comment: we know they are not perfect, and +welcome any hint that may conduce to their improvement. So in the broad, +free West. The South alone resents any criticism on her peculiarities, +and repels as enmity any attempt to convince her that her forced labor +is her vital weakness and her greatest peril.</p> + +<p>This is about to pass away. Slavery, having appealed to the sword for +justification, is to be condemned at her chosen tribunal and to fall on +the weapon she has aimed at the heart of the Republic. A new relation of +North to South, based on equality, governed by justice, and conceding +the fullest liberty, is to replace fawning servility by manly candor, +and to lay the foundations of a sincere, mutual, and lasting esteem. We +already know that valor is an American quality; we shall yet realize +that Truth is every man's interest, and that whatever repels scrutiny +confesses itself unfit to live. The Union of the future, being based on +eternal verities, will be cemented by every year's duration, until we +shall come in truth to 'know no North, no South, no East, no West,' but +one vast and glorious country, wherein sectional jealousies and hatreds +shall be unknown, and every one shall rejoice in the consciousness that +he is a son and citizen of the first of Republics, the land of +Washington and Jefferson, of Adams, Hamilton, and Jay, wherein the +inalienable Rights of Man as Man, at first pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span>pounded as the logical +justification of a struggle for Independence, became in the next +century, and through the influence of another great convulsion, the +practical basis of the entire political and social fabric—the accepted, +axiomatic root of the National life.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="WAS_HE_SUCCESSFUL" id="WAS_HE_SUCCESSFUL"></a>WAS HE SUCCESSFUL?</h2> + +<blockquote><p>'Do but grasp into the thick of human life! Everyone <i>lives</i> it—to not +many is it <i>known</i>; and seize it where you will, it is +interesting.'—<i>Goethe</i>.</p> + +<p>'<span class="smcap">Successful</span>.—Terminating in accomplishing what is wished or +intended.'—<i>Webster's Dictionary</i>.</p></blockquote> + + +<h3><a name="SEVENTH" id="SEVENTH"></a>CHAPTER SEVENTH.</h3> + +<h4>HIRAM MEEKER VISITS MR. BURNS.</h4> + +<p>Mr. Burns had finished his breakfast.</p> + +<p>A horse and wagon, as was customary at that hour, stood outside the +gate. He himself was on the portico where his daughter had followed him +to give her father his usual kiss. At that moment Mr. Burns saw some one +crossing the street toward his place. As he was anxious not to be +detained, he hastened down the walk, so that if he could not escape the +stranger, the person might at least understand that he had prior +engagements. Besides, Mr. Burns never transacted business at home, and a +visitor at so early an hour must have business for an excuse. The +new-comer evidently was as anxious to reach the house before Mr. Burns +left it, as the latter was to make his escape, for pausing a moment +across the way, as if to make certain, the sight of the young lady +appeared to reassure him, and he walked over and had laid his hand upon +the gate just as Mr. Burns was attempting to pass out.</p> + +<p>Standing on opposite sides, each with a hand upon the paling, the two +met. It would have made a good picture. Mr. Burns was at this time a +little past forty, but his habit of invariable cheerfulness, his +energetic manner, and his fine fresh complexion gave him the looks of +one between thirty and thirty-five. On the contrary, although Hiram +Meeker was scarcely twenty, and had never had a care nor a thought to +perplex him, he at the same time possessed a certain experienced look +which made you doubtful of his age. If one had said he was twenty, you +would assent to the proposition; if pronounced to be thirty, you would +consider it near the mark. So, standing as they did, you would perceive +no great disparity in their ages.</p> + +<p>We are apt to fancy individuals whom we have never seen, but of whom we +hear as accomplishing much, older than they really are. In this instance +Hiram had pictured a person at least twenty years older than Mr. Burns +appeared to be. He was quite sure there could be no mistake in the +identity of the man whom he beheld descending the portico. When he saw +him at such close quarters he was staggered for a moment, but for a +moment only. 'It must be he,' so he said to himself.</p> + +<p>Now Hiram had planned his visit with special reference to meeting Mr. +Burns in his own house. He had two reasons for this. He knew that there +he should find him more at his ease, more off his guard, and in a state +of mind better adapted to considering his case socially and in a +friendly manner than in the counting-room.</p> + +<p>Again: Sarah Burns. He would have an opportunity to renew the +acquaintance already begun.</p> + +<p>Well, there they stood. Both felt a little chagrined—Mr. Burns that an +appointment was threatened to be interrupted, and Hiram that his plan +was in danger of being foiled.</p> + +<p>This was for an instant only.</p> + +<p>Mr. Burns opened the gate passing al<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span>most rapidly through, bowing at the +same time to Hiram.</p> + +<p>'Do you wish to see me?' he said, as he proceeded to untie the horse and +get into the wagon.</p> + +<p>'Mr. Joel Burns, I presume?'</p> + +<p>'Yes.'</p> + +<p>'I did wish to see you, sir, on matters of no consequence to you, but +personal to myself. I can call again.'</p> + +<p>'I am going down to the paper-mill to be absent for an hour. If you will +come to my office in that time, I shall be at liberty.'</p> + +<p>Hiram had a faint hope he would be invited to step into the house and +wait. Disappointed in this, he replied very modestly: 'Perhaps you will +permit me to ride with you—that is, unless some one else is going. I +would like much to look about the factories.'</p> + +<p>'Certainly. Jump in.' And away they drove to Slab City.</p> + +<p>Hiram was careful to make no allusion to the subject of his mission to +Burnsville. He remained modestly silent while Mr. Burns occasionally +pointed out an important building and explained its use or object. +Arriving at the paper-mill, he gave Hiram a brief direction where he +might spend his time most agreeably.</p> + +<p>'I shall be ready to return in three quarters of an hour,' he said, and +disappeared inside.</p> + +<p>'I must be careful, and make no mistakes with such a man,' soliloquized +Hiram, as he turned to pursue his walk. 'He is quick and rapid—a word +and a blow—too rapid to achieve a GREAT success. It takes a man, +though, to originate and carry through all this. Every thing flourishes +here, that is evident. Joel Burns ought to be a richer man than they say +he is. He has sold too freely, and on too easy terms, I dare say. No +doubt, come to get into his affairs, there will be ever so much to look +after. Too much a man of action. Does not think enough. Just the place +for me for two or three years.'</p> + +<p>Hiram had no time for special examination, but strolled about from point +to point, so as to gain a general impression of what was going on. Five +minutes before the time mentioned by Mr. Burns had elapsed, Hiram was at +his post waiting for him to come out. This little circumstance did not +pass unnoticed. It elicited a single observation, 'You are punctual;' to +which Hiram made no reply. The drive back to the village was passed +nearly in silence. Mr. Burns's mind was occupied with his affairs, and +Hiram thought best not to open his own business till he could have a +fair opportunity.</p> + +<p>Mr. Burns's place for the transaction of general business was a small +one-story brick building, erected expressly for the purpose, and +conveniently located. There was no name on the door, but over it a +pretty large sign displayed in gilt letters the word 'Office,' simply. +Mr. Burns had some time before discovered this establishment to be a +necessity, in consequence of the multitude of matters with which he was +connected. He was the principal partner in the leading store in the +village, where a large trade was carried on. The lumber business was +still good. He had always two or three buildings in course of erection. +He owned one half the paper-mill. In short, his interests were extensive +and various, but all snug and well-regulated, and under his control. For +general purposes, he spent a certain time in his office. Beyond that, he +could be found at the store, at the mill, in some of the factories, or +elsewhere, as the occasion called him.</p> + +<p>Driving up to the 'office,' he entered with Hiram, and pointing the +latter to a seat, took one himself and waited to hear what our hero had +to say.</p> + +<p>Hiram opened his case, coming directly to the point. He gave a brief +account of his previous education and business experience. At the +mention of Benjamin Jessup's name, an ominous 'humph!' escaped Mr. +Burns's lips, which Hiram was not slow to notice. He saw it would prove +a disadvantage to have come from his establishment. Without attempting +immediately to modify the unfavorable impression, he was careful, before +he finished, to take pains to do so.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span></p> + +<p>'I have thus explained to you,' concluded Hiram,'that my object is to +gain a full, thorough knowledge of business, with the hope of becoming, +in time, a well-informed and, I trust, successful merchant.'</p> + +<p>'And for that purpose—'</p> + +<p>'For that purpose, I am very desirous to enter your service.'</p> + +<p>'Really, I do not think there is a place vacant which would suit you, +Mr. Meeker.'</p> + +<p>'It is of little consequence whether or not the place would suit me, +sir; only let me have the opportunity, and I will endeavor to adapt +myself to it.'</p> + +<p>'Oh! what I mean is, we have at present no situation fitted for a young +man as old and as competent as you appear to be.'</p> + +<p>'But if I were willing to undertake it?'</p> + +<p>'You see there would be no propriety in placing you in a situation +properly filled by a boy, or at least a youth. Still, I will not forget +your request; and if occasion should require, you shall have the first +hearing.'</p> + +<p>'I had hoped,' continued Hiram, no way daunted, 'that possibly you might +have been disposed to take me in your private employ.'</p> + +<p>'How?'</p> + +<p>'You have large, varied, and increasing interests. You must be severely +tasked, at least at times, to properly manage all. Could I not serve you +as an assistant? You would find me, I think, industrious and +persevering. I bring certificates of character from the Rev. Mr. +Goddard, our clergyman, and from both the deacons in our church.'</p> + +<p>This was said with a naïve earnestness, coupled with a diffidence +apparently <i>so</i> genuine, that Mr. Burns could not but be favorably +impressed by it. In fact, the idea of a general assistant had never +before occurred to him. He reflected a moment, and replied:</p> + +<p>'It is true I have much on my hands, but one who has a great deal to do +can do a great deal; besides, the duties I undertake it would be +impossible to devolve on another.'</p> + +<p>'I wish you would give me a trial. The amount of salary would be no +object. I want to learn business, and I know I can learn it of <i>you</i>.'</p> + +<p>Mr. Burns was not insensible to the compliment. His features relaxed +into a smile, but his opinion remained unchanged.</p> + +<p>'Well,' said Hiram, in a pathetic tone, 'I hate to go back and meet +father. He said he presumed you had forgotten him, though he remembered +you when you lived in Sudbury, a young man about my age; and he told me +to make an engagement with you, if it were only as errand-boy.'</p> + +<p>[O Hiram! how could that glib and ready lie come so aptly to your lips? +Your father never said a word to you on the subject. It is doubtful if +he knew you were going to Burnsville at all, and he never had seen Mr. +Burns in his life. How carefully, Hiram, you calculated before you +resolved on this delicate method to secure your object! The risk of the +falsity of the whole ever being discovered—that was very remote, and +amounted to little. What you were about to say would injure no +one—wrong no one. If not true, it might well be true. Oh! but Hiram, do +you not see you are permitting an element of falsehood to creep in and +leaven your whole nature? You are exhibiting an utter disregard of +circumstances in your determination to carry your point. Heretofore you +have looked to but one end—self; but you have committed no overt act. +Have a care, Hiram Meeker; Satan is gaining on you.]</p> + +<p>Mr. Burns had not been favorably impressed, at first sight, with his +visitor. Magnetically he was repelled by him. He was too just a man to +allow this to influence him, by word or manner. He permitted Hiram to +accompany him to the mill and return with him.</p> + +<p>During this time, the latter had learned something of his man. He saw +quickly enough that he had failed favorably to impress Mr. Burns. +Determining not to lose the day, he assumed an entire ingenuousness of +character, coupled with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> much simplicity and earnestness. He appealed to +the certificates of his minister and the deacons, as if these would be +sure to settle the question irrespective of Mr. Burns's wants; and at +last the <i>lie</i> slipped from his mouth, in appearance as innocently as +truth from the lips of an angel.</p> + +<p>At the mention of Sudbury and the time when he was a young man, Hiram, +who watched narrowly, thought he could perceive a slight quickening in +the eye of Mr. Burns—nothing more.</p> + +<p>His only reply, however, to the appeal, was to ask:</p> + +<p>'How old are you?'</p> + +<p>'Nineteen,' said Hiram softly. (He would be twenty the following week, +but he did not say so.)</p> + +<p>'Only nineteen!' exclaimed Mr. Burns, 'I took you for five-and-twenty.'</p> + +<p>'It is very singular,' replied Hiram mournfully; 'I am not aware that +persons generally think me older than I am.'</p> + +<p>'Oh! I presume not; and now I look closer, I do not think you <i>do</i> +appear more than nineteen.'</p> + +<p>It was really astonishing how Hiram's countenance had changed. How every +trace of keen, shrewd apprehension had vanished, leaving only the +appearance of a highly intelligent and interesting, but almost diffident +youth!</p> + +<p>Mr. Burns sat a moment without speaking. Hiram did not dare utter a +word. He knew he was dealing with a man quick in his impressions and +rapid to decide. He had done his best, and would not venture farther. +Mr. Burns, looking up from a reflective posture, cast his eyes on Hiram. +The latter really appeared so amazingly distressed that Mr. Burns's +feelings were touched.</p> + +<p>'Is your mother living,' he asked.</p> + +<p>Hiram was almost on the point of denying the fact, but that would have +been too much.</p> + +<p>'Oh! yes, sir,' he replied.</p> + +<p>Again Mr. Burns was silent. Again Hiram calculated the chances, and +would not venture to interrupt him.</p> + +<p>This time Mr. Burns's thoughts took another direction. It occurred to +him that he had of late overtasked his daughter. 'True, it is a great +source of pleasure for us both that she can be of so much assistance to +me, but her duties naturally accumulate; she is doing too much. It is +not appropriate.'</p> + +<p>So thought Mr. Burns while Hiram Meeker sat waiting for a decision.</p> + +<p>'It is true,' continued Mr. Burns to himself, 'I think I ought to have a +private clerk. The idea occurred even to this youth. I will investigate +who and what he is, and will give him a trial if all is right.'</p> + +<p>He turned toward Hiram:</p> + +<p>'Young man, I am inclined to favor your request. But if I give you +employment in my <i>office</i>, your relations with me will necessarily be +confidential, and the situation will be one of trust and confidence. I +must make careful inquiries.'</p> + +<p>'Certainly, sir,' replied Hiram, drawing a long breath, for he saw the +victory was gained. 'I will leave these certificates, which may aid you +in your inquiries. I was born and brought up in Hampton, and you will +have no difficulty in finding persons who know my parents and me. When +shall I call again, sir?'</p> + +<p>'In a week.'</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>'Won! won! yes, won!' exclaimed Hiram aloud, when he had walked a +sufficient distance from the 'office' to enable him to do so without +danger of being overheard. 'A close shave, though! If he had said 'No,' +all Hampton would not have moved him. What a splendid place for me! How +did I come to be smart enough to suggest such a thing to him? I rather +think three years here will make me all right for New-York.'</p> + +<p>Hiram walked along to the hotel, and ordered dinner. While it was +getting ready, he strolled over the village. He was in hopes to meet, by +some accident, Miss Burns.</p> + +<p>He was not disappointed. Turning a corner, he came suddenly on Sarah, +who had run out for a call on some friend. Hiram fancied he had produced +a de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span>cided impression the evening they met at Mrs. Crofts', and with a +slight fluttering at the heart, he was about to stop and extend his +hand, when Miss Burns, hardly appearing to recognize him, only bowed +slightly and passed on her way.</p> + +<p>'You shall pay for this, young lady,' muttered Hiram between his +teeth—'you shall pay for this, or my name is not Hiram Meeker! I would +come here now for nothing else but to pull <i>her</i> down!' continued Hiram +savagely. 'I will let her know whom she has to deal with.'</p> + +<p>He walked back to the hotel in a state of great irritation. With the +sight of a good dinner, however, this was in a degree dispelled, and +before he finished it, his philosophy came to his relief.</p> + +<p>'Time—time—it takes time. The fact is, I shall like the girl all the +better for her playing <i>off</i> at first. Shan't forget it though—not +quite!'</p> + +<p>He drove back to Hampton that afternoon. His feelings were placid and +complacent as usual. He had asked the Lord in the morning to prosper his +journey and to grant him success in gaining his object, and he now +returned thanks for this new mark of God's grace and favor.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Mr. Burns did not inquire of the Rev. Mr. Goddard, nor of either of the +deacons mentioned by Hiram. He wrote direct to Thaddeus Smith, Senior, +whom he knew, and who he thought would be able to give a correct account +of Hiram. Informing Mr. Smith that the young man had applied to him for +a situation of considerable trust, he asked that gentleman to give his +careful opinion about his capacity, integrity, and general character. As +there could be but one opinion on the subject in all Hampton, Mr. Smith +returned an answer every way favorable. It is true he did not like Hiram +himself, but if called on for a reason, he could not have told why. As +we have recorded, every one spoke well of him. Every one said how good, +and moral, and smart he was, and honest Mr. Smith reported accordingly.</p> + +<p>'Well, well,' said Mr. Burns, 'if Smith gives such an account of him +while he has been all the time in an opposition store, he must be all +right.... Don't quite like his looks, though ... wonder what it is.'</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>When at the expiration of the week Hiram went to receive an answer from +Mr. Burns, he did not attempt to find him at his house. He was careful +to call at the office at the hour Mr. Burns was certain to be in.</p> + +<p>'I hear a good account of you, Meeker,' said Mr. Burns, 'and in that +respect every thing is satisfactory. Had I not given you so much +encouragement, I should still hesitate about making a new department. +However, we will try it.'</p> + +<p>'I am very thankful to you, sir. As I said, I want to learn business and +the compensation is no object.'</p> + +<p>'But it <i>is</i> an object with me. I can have no one in my service who is +not fully paid. Your position should entitle you to a liberal salary. If +you can not earn it, you can not fill the place.'</p> + +<p>'Then I shall try to earn it, I assure you,' replied Hiram, 'and will +leave the matter entirely with you. I have brought you a line from my +father,' he continued, and he handed Mr. Burns a letter.</p> + +<p>It contained a request, prepared at Hiram's suggestion, that Mr. Burns +would admit him in his family. The other ran his eye hastily over it. A +slight frown contracted his brow.</p> + +<p>'Impossible!' he exclaimed. 'My domestic arrangements will not permit of +such a thing. Quite impossible.'</p> + +<p>'So I told father, but he said it would do no harm to write. He did not +think you would be offended.'</p> + +<p>'Offended! certainly not.'</p> + +<p>'Perhaps,' continued Hiram, 'you will be kind enough to recommend a good +place to me. I should wish to reside in a religious family, where no +other boarders are taken.'</p> + +<p>The desire was a proper one, but Hiram's tone did not have the ring of +the true metal. It grated slightly on Mr. Burns's moral nerves—a little +of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> first aversion came back—but he suppressed it, and promised to +endeavor to think of a place which should meet Hiram's wishes. It was +now Saturday. It was understood Hiram should commence his duties the +following Monday. This arranged, he took leave of his employer, and +returned home.</p> + +<p>That evening Mr. Burns told his daughter he was about to relieve her +from the drudgery—daily increasing—of copying letters and taking care +of so many papers, by employing a confidential clerk. Sarah at first was +grieved; but when her father declared he should talk with her just as +ever about every thing he did or proposed to do, and that he thought in +the end the new clerk would be a great relief to him, she was content.</p> + +<p>'But whom have you got, father,' (she always called him 'father,') 'for +so important a situation?'</p> + +<p>'His name is Meeker—Hiram Meeker—a young man very highly recommended +to me from Hampton.'</p> + +<p>'I wonder if it was not he whom I met last Saturday!'</p> + +<p>'Possibly; he called on me that day. Do you know him?'</p> + +<p>'I presume it is the same person I saw at Mrs. Crofts' some weeks since. +Last Saturday a young man met me and almost stopped, as if about to +speak. I did not recognize him, although I could not well avoid bowing. +Now I feel quite sure it was Mr. Meeker.'</p> + +<p>'Very likely.'</p> + +<p>'Well, I do hope he will prove faithful and efficient. I recollect every +one spoke very highly of him.'</p> + +<p>'I dare say.'</p> + +<p>Mr. Burns was in a reverie. Certain thoughts were passing through his +mind—painful, unhappy thoughts—thoughts which had never before visited +him.</p> + +<p>'Sarah, how old are you?'</p> + +<p>'Why, father, what a question!' She came and sat on his knee and looked +fondly into his eyes. 'What <i>can</i> you be thinking of not to remember I +am seventeen?'</p> + +<p>'Of course I remember it, dear child,' replied Mr. Burns tenderly; 'my +mind was wandering, and I spoke without reflection.'</p> + +<p>'But you were thinking of me?'</p> + +<p>'Perhaps.'</p> + +<p>He kissed her, and rose and walked slowly up and down the room. Still he +was troubled.</p> + +<p>We shall not at present endeavor to penetrate his thoughts; nor is it +just now to our purpose to present them to the reader.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Hiram Meeker had been again <i>successful</i>. He had resolved to enter the +service of Mr. Burns and he <i>had</i> entered it. He came over Monday +morning early, and put up at the hotel. In three or four days he secured +just the kind of boarding-place he was in search of. A very respectable +widow lady, with two grown-up daughters, after consulting with Mr. +Burns, did not object to receive him as a member of her family.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="AN_ARMY_CONTRACTOR" id="AN_ARMY_CONTRACTOR"></a>AN ARMY CONTRACTOR.</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Lived a man of iron mold,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Crafty glance and hidden eye,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dead to every gain but gold,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Deaf to every human sigh.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Man he was of hoary beard,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Withered cheek and wrinkled brow.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Imaged on his soul, appeared:<br /></span> +<span class="i1">'Honest as the times allow.'<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span></div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="LITERARY_NOTICES" id="LITERARY_NOTICES"></a>LITERARY NOTICES.</h2> + + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Why Paul Ferroll Killed his Wife</span>. By the Author of Paul +Ferroll. New-York: Carleton, 413 Broadway. Boston: N. Williams & +Co.</p></div> + +<p>Those who remember <i>Paul Ferroll</i>, probably recall it as a novel of +merit, which excited attention, partly from its peculiarity, and partly +from the mystery in which its writer chose to conceal herself—a not +unusual course with timid debutantes in literature, who hope either to +<i>intriguer</i> the public with their masks, or quietly escape the disgrace +of a <i>fiasco</i> should they fail. Mrs. Clive is, however, it would seem, +satisfied that the public did not reject her, since she now reäppears to +inform us, 'novelly,' why the extremely ill-married Paul made himself +the chief of sinners, by committing wife-icide. The work is in fact a +very readable novel—much less killing indeed than its title—but still +deserving the great run which we are informed it is having, and which, +unlike the run of shad, will not we presume—as it is a very summer +book—fall off as the season advances.</p> + + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">The Channings</span>. A Domestic Novel of Real Life. By Mrs. +Henry Wood. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson. Boston: Crosby and +Nichols.</p></div> + +<p>Notwithstanding the praise which has been so lavishly bestowed on this +'tale of domestic life,' the reader will, if any thing more than a mere +reader of novels for the very sake of 'story,' probably agree with us, +after dragging through to the end, that it would be a blessing if some +manner of stop could be put to the manufacture of such books. A really +<i>original</i>, earnest novel; vivid in its life-picturing, genial in its +characters; the book of a man or woman who has thought something, and +actually <i>knows</i> something, is at any time a world's blessing. But what +has <i>The Channings</i> of all this in it? Every sentence in it rings like +something read of old, all the incidents are of a kind which were worn +out years ago—to be sure the third-rate story-reader may lose himself +in it—just as we may for a fiftieth time endeavor to trace out the plan +of the Hampton Labyrinth, and with about as much real profit or +amusement.</p> + +<p>It is a melancholy sign of the times to learn that such hackneyed +English trash as <i>The Channings</i> has sold well! It has not deserved it. +American novels which have appeared nearly cotemporaneously with it, and +which have ten times its merit, have not met with the same success, for +the simple and sole reason that almost any English circulating library +stuff will at any time meet with better patronage than a home work. When +our public becomes as much interested in itself as it is in the very +common-place life of Cockney clergymen and clerks, we shall perhaps +witness a truly generous encouragement of native literature.</p> + + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">The Pearl of Orr's Island</span>. A Story of the Coast of Maine. +By Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. Boston: Ticknor and Fields.</p></div> + +<p>In reading this quiet, natural, well-pictured narrative of Northern +life, we are tempted to exclaim—fresh from the extraordinary contrast +presented by <i>Agnes of Sorrento—O si sic omnes!</i> Why can not Mrs. Stowe +<i>always</i> write like this? Why not limit her efforts to subjects which +develop her really fine powers—to setting forth the social life of +America at the present day, instead of harping away at the seven times +worn out and knotted cord of Catholic and Italian romance? <i>The Pearl of +Orr's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span> Island</i>, though not a work which will sweep Uncle Tom-like in +tempest fashion over all lands and through all languages, is still a +very readable and very refreshing novel—full of reality as we find it +among real people, 'inland or on sounding shore,' and by no means +deficient in those moral and religious lessons to inculcate which it +appears to have been written. Piety is indeed the predominant +characteristic of the work—not obtrusive or sectarian, but earnest and +actual; so that it will probably be classed, on the whole, as a +religious novel, though we can hardly recall a romance in which the +pious element interferes so little with the general interest of the +plot, or is so little conducive to gloom. The hard, '<i>Angular</i> Saxon' +characteristics of the rural people who constitute the <i>dramatis +personæ</i>, their methods of thought and tone of feeling, so singularly +different from that of 'the world,' their marked peculiarities, are all +set forth with an apparently unconscious ability deserving the highest +praise.</p> + + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">The Golden Hour</span>. By <span class="smcap">Monoure D. Conway</span>, Author of +the 'Rejected Stone,' '<i>Impera Parendo</i>.' Boston: Ticknor and +Fields.</p></div> + +<p>The most remarkable work which the war has called out is beyond question +the <i>Rejected Stone</i>. Wild, vigorous, earnest, even to suffering, honest +as truth itself, quaint, humorous, pathetic, and startlingly eccentric. +Those who read it at once decided that a new writer had arisen among us, +and one destined to make no mean mark in the destinies of his country. +The reader who will refer to our first number will find what we said of +it in all sincerity, since the author was then to us unknown. He is—it +is almost needless to inform the reader—a thorough-going abolitionist, +yet one who, while looking more intently at the welfare of the black +than we care to do in the present imbroglio, still appreciates and urges +Emancipation, or freeing the black, in its relation to the welfare of +the white man. Mr. Conway is not, however, a man who speaks ignorantly +on this subject. A Virginian born and bred, brought up in the very heart +of the institution, he studied it at home in all its relations, and +found out its evils by experience. A thoroughly honest man, too +clear-headed and far too intelligent to be rated as a fanatic; too +familiar with his subject to be at all disregarded, he claims close +attention in many ways, those of wit and eloquence not being by any +means the least. In the work before us, he insists that there is a +golden hour at hand, a title borrowed from the quaint advertisement, of +'Lost a golden hour set with sixty diamond minutes'—which if not +grasped at by the strong, daring hand will see our great national +opportunity lost forever. We are not such disbelievers in fate as to +imagine that this golden hour ever can be inevitably lost. If the cause +of freedom rolls slowly, it is because even in free soil there are too +many Conservative pebbles. Still we agree with Conway as to his estimate +of the great mass of cowardice, irresolution, and folly which react on +our administration. If the word 'Emancipationist,'—meaning thereby one +who looks to the welfare of the <i>white</i> man rather than the negro—be +substituted for 'Abolitionist' in the following, our more intelligent +readers will probably agree with Mr. Conway exactly:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>'If this country is to be saved, the Abolitionists are to save it; +and though they seem few in numbers, they are not by a thousandth +so few as were the Christians when JESUS suffered, or Protestants +when Luther spoke. There is need only that we should stand as one +man, and unto the end, for an absolutely free Republic, swearing to +promote eternal strife until it be attained—until in waters which +Agitation, the angel of freedom, has troubled, the diseased nation +shall bathe and be made every whit whole.</p> + +<p>'The Golden Hour is before us: there is in America enough wisdom +and courage to coin it, ere it passes, into national honor and +peace, if it is all put forth.</p> + +<p>'Up, hearts!'</p></div> + +<p>It is needless to say that we earnestly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> commend this book to all who +are truly interested in the great questions of the time.</p> + + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Tragedy of Success</span>. Boston: Ticknor and Fields.</p></div> + +<p>Another of the extraordinary series bearing the motto, '<i>Aux plus +desheritées le plus d'amour</i>'—works as strongly marked by talent as by +misapplied taste. The dramatic ability, the deep vein of poetry, the +earnest thought, faith, and humanity of these dramas or drama, are +beyond question—but very questionable to our mind is the extreme love +of over-adorning truth which can induce a writer to represent plantation +negroes as speaking elegant language and using lofty, tender, and poetic +sentiments on almost all occasions, or at least to a degree which is +exceptional and not regular. If we hope that the time may come when all +of <span class="smcap">God's</span> children will be raised to this high standard of +thought and culture, so much the more reason is there why they should +not now be exaggerated and placed in a false light. Yet, as we have +said, the work abounds in noble thoughts and true poetry. It may be read +with somewhat more than 'profit,' for it has within it a great and +loving heart. True <i>humanity</i> is impressed on every page, and where that +exists greatness and beauty are never absent.</p> + + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">The Hunchback of Notre Dame</span>. By <span class="smcap">Victor Hugo</span>. +New-York: Dick and Fitzgerald. 1862.</p></div> + +<p>Many years ago—say some thirty-odd—when French literature still walked +in the old groves, and the classic form and style of the old revolution +still swayed all the minor minds, there sprung up a reäction in the +so-called romantic school of which Victor Hugo became the leader. The +medieval renaissance, which fifty years before had penetrated Germany +and England, and indeed all the North, was late in coming to France, but +when it did come it stirred the Latin Quarter and Young France +wonderfully. If its results were less remarkable in literature than in +any other country, they were at least more admired in their day. +Principal among these results was the novel now before us. And this book +is really a tolerable imitation of Walter Scott. The feverish spirit of +modern France craved, indeed, stronger ingredients than the Wizard of +the North was wont to gather, and the <i>Hunchback</i> is accordingly +'sensational.' It has in fact been called extravagant—yes, forced and +unnatural. Even ordinary readers were apt to say as much of it. We well +remember meeting many years ago in a well-thumbed circulating-library +copy of the <i>Hunchback of Notre Dame</i> the following doggerel on the last +page:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'In Paris when to the Grève you go,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pray do not grieve if <span class="smcap">Victor Hugo</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Should there be hanging by a rope,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Without the blessing of the Pope,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or that of any human creature<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On him who libels human nature.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Yet we counsel all who would be well-informed in literature—as well as +the far greater number of those who read only for entertainment, to get +this work. It is exciting—full of strange, quaint picturing of the +Middle Ages, has vivid characters, and is full of life. Among the series +of books with fewer faults, but, alas! with far fewer excellencies, +which are daily printed, there is, after all, seldom one so well worth +reading as <i>The Hunchback of Notre Dame</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="EDITORS_TABLE" id="EDITORS_TABLE"></a>EDITOR'S TABLE.</h2> + + +<p>At last we are wide awake. At last the nation has found out its +strength, and determined, despite doughface objections and impediments +to every proposal of every kind, to push the war with energy, so that +the foe <i>shall</i> be overwhelmed. Six hundred thousand men, as we write, +will soon swell the ranks of the Federal army, and if six hundred +thousand more are needed they can be had. For the North is arming in +real earnest, thank God! and when it rises in <i>all</i> its force, who shall +withstand it? It is a thing to remember with pride, that the +proclamation calling for the second three hundred thousand by draft, was +received with the same joy as though we had heard of a great victory.</p> + +<p>Government has not gone to work one day too soon. From a rebellion, the +present cause of strife has at length assumed the proportion of equal +war. The South has cast its <i>whole</i> population, all its means, all its +energy, heart and soul, life and future, on one desperate game; while we +with every advantage have let out our strength little by little, so as +to hurt the enemy as little as possible. Doughface democracy among us +has squalled as if receiving deadly wounds at every proposal to crush or +injure the foe. It opposed, heart and soul, the early On to Richmond +movement, when the Republicans clamored for an overwhelming army, a +grand rally, and a bold push. It rejoiced at heart over Bull Run—for +the South was saved for a time. It upheld the wounded snake, 'anaconda' +system, it opposed the using of contrabands in any way, it urged, heart +and soul, the protection of the property of rebels, it warred on +confiscation in any form, it was ready with a negative to every +proposition to energetically push the war, and finally its press is now +opposing the settling our soldiers on the cotton-lands of the South. +Thus far the slow course of this war of ten millions against twenty +millions is the history of the action of falsehood and treason benumbing +the majority. They have lied against us, and against millions, that the +negro was all we cared for, though it was the WHITE MAN, far, far above +the black for whom we spoke and cared, or how else could that <i>free</i> +labor in which the black is but a small unit have been our principal +hope and thought?</p> + +<p>But treason at home could not last forever, nor will lies always endure. +The people have found out that the foe <i>can not</i> be gently whipped and +amiably reinstated in their old place of honor. Moreover we have no time +to lose. Another year will find us financially bankrupt, and the enemy +in all probability, in that case, free and fairly afloat by foreign aid.</p> + +<p>And if the South goes, <i>all</i> may possibly go. In every city exist +desperate and unprincipled men—the <span class="smcap">Fernando Woods</span> of the +dangerous classes—who to rule would do all in their power to break our +remaining union into hundreds of small independencies. The South would +flood us with smuggled European goods—for, be it remembered, this +iniquitous device to beat down our manufacture has always been prominent +on their programme—our industry would be paralyzed, exchanges ruined, +and the Eastern and Middle States become paltry shadows of what they +once were.</p> + +<p>The people have at last seen this terrible ghost stare them full in the +face. They have found out that it is 'rule or ruin' in earnest. No time +now to have every decisive and expedient measure yelled down as +'unconstitutional' or undemocratic or unprecedented. No days<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span> these to +fight a maddened foe with conservative kid-gloves and frighten the fell +tiger back with democratic rose-water. We must do all and every thing, +even as the foe have done. We have been generous, we have been +merciful—we have protected property, we have returned slaves, we have +let our wounded lie in the open air and die rather than offend the +fiendish-hearted women of Secessia—and what have we got by it? Lies and +lies, again and yet again. For refusing to touch the black, Mr. Lincoln +is termed by the Southern press 'a dirty negro-stealer,' and our troops, +for <i>not</i> taking the slaves and thereby giving the South all its present +crop and for otherwise aiding them, are simply held up as hell-hounds +and brigands. Much we have made by forbearance!</p> + +<p>The miserable position held by Free State secessionists, Breckinridge +Democrats, rose-water conservatives, and other varieties of the great +Northern branch of Southern treason, is fully exemplified by the +following extract from Breckinridge's special organ, the Louisville +<i>Courier</i>, printed while Nashville was still under rebel rule, an +article which has been of late more than once closely reëchoed and +imitated by the Richmond <i>Whig</i>.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>'This,' says the <i>Courier</i>, 'has been called a fratricidal war by +some, by others an irrepressible conflict between freedom and +slavery. We respectfully take issue with the authors of both these +ideas. We are not the brothers of the Yankees, and the slavery +question is merely the <i>pretext, not the cause of the war</i>. The +true irrepressible conflict lies fundamentally in the hereditary +hostility, the sacred animosity, the eternal antagonism, between +the two races engaged.</p> + +<p>'The Norman cavalier can not brook the vulgar familiarity of the +Saxon Yankee, while the latter is continually devising some plan to +bring down his aristocratic neighbor to his own detested level. +Thus was the contest waged in the old United States. So long as +<i>Dickinson dough-faces were to be bought</i>, and <i>Cochrane cowards to +be frightened</i>, so long was the Union tolerable to Southern men; +but when, owing to divisions in our ranks, the Yankee hirelings +placed one of their own spawn over us, political connection became +unendurable, and separation necessary to preserve our +<i>self-respect</i>.</p> + +<p>'As our Norman friends in England, always a minority, have ruled +their Saxon countrymen in political vassalage up to the present +day, so have we, the slave oligarchs, governed the Yankees till +within a twelve-month. We framed the Constitution, for seventy +years molded the policy of the Government, and placed our own men, +or '<i>Northern men with Southern principles</i>,' in power.'</p></div> + +<p>Cool—and in part true. They <i>did</i> rule us in political vassalage, they +<i>did</i> place their own men, or 'Northern men with Southern principles,' +in power, and there are scores of such abandoned traitors even now +crying out 'pro-slavery' and abusing Emancipation among us, in the hope +that if some turn of Fortune's wheel should separate the South, they may +again rise to power as its agents and representatives! GOD help them! It +is hard to conceive of men sunk so low! Nobody wants them now—but a +time <i>may</i> come. They are in New-York—there is a peculiarly +contemptible clique of them in Boston, and the Philadelphia <i>Bulletin</i> +informs us that there is exactly such another precious party in the city +of Brotherly Love, who are 'in a very awkward position just now, +inasmuch as there is no market for them. They are in the position of +Johnson and Don Juan in the slave-market at Constantinople, and ready to +exclaim:</p> + + +<p class='center'>'I wish to G—d that some body would buy us!''</p> + +<p>The first draft for the army was a death-blow to the slow-poison +democracy, and it has been frightened accordingly. Like a slug on whom +salt has just begun to fall, the crawling mass is indeed manifesting +symptoms of frightened activity—but it is the activity of death. For +the North is awake in real earnest; it is out with banner and bayonet; +there is to be no more playing at war or wasting of lives—the foe is to +be rooted out—<i>delanda est Dixie</i>. And in the hour of triumph where +will the pro-slavery traitors be then? Where? Where they always strive +to be—on the <i>winning</i> side. They will 'back water' as they have done +on progressive measure which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> they once opposed, since the war begun; +they will eat their words and fawn and wheedle those in power until the +opportunity again occurs for building up on some sham principle a party +of rum and faro-banks, low demagogue-ism, ignorance, reaction, and +vulgarity. Then from his present toad-like swelling and whispering, we +shall hear the full-expanded fiend roar out into a real life. It is the +old story of history—the corrupt and venal arraigning itself against +truth and terming the latter 'visionary' and 'fanatical.'</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Those who visit the sick soldiers and do good in the hospitals +occasionally get a gleam of fun among all the sad scenes—for any wag +who has been to the wars seldom loses his humor, although he may have +lost all else save that and honor. Witness a sketch from life:</p> + + +<h4>A LITTLE HEAVY.</h4> + +<p>C——, good soul, after taking all the little comforts he could afford +to give to the wounded soldiers, went into the hospital for the fortieth +time the other day, with his mite, consisting of several papers of +fine-cut chewing-tobacco, Solace for the wounded, as he called it. He +came to one bed, where a poor fellow lay cheerfully humming a tune, and +studying out faces on the papered wall.</p> + +<p>'Got a fever?' asked C——.</p> + +<p>'No,' answered the soldier.</p> + +<p>'Got a cold?'</p> + +<p>'Yes, cold—lead—like the d——l!'</p> + +<p>'Where?'</p> + +<p>'Well, to tell you the truth, it's pretty well scattered. First, there's +a bullet in my right arm, they han't dug that out yet. Then there's one +near my thigh—it's sticking in yet: one in my leg—hit the bone—<i>that</i> +fellow <i>hurts</i>! one through my left hand—that fell out. And I tell you +what, friend, with all this lead in me, I feel, ginrally speaking, <i>a +little heavy all over</i>!'</p> + +<p>C—— lightened his woes with a double quantity of Solace.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>C—— was a good fellow, and the soldier deserved his 'Solace.' Many of +them among us are poor indeed. 'Boys!' exclaimed a wounded volunteer to +two comrades, as they paused the other day before a tobacconist's and +examined with the eyes of connoisseurs the brier or bruyére-wood pipes +in his window, 'Boys! I'd give fifty dollars, if I had it, for four +shillins to buy one of them pipes with!'</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>In a late number of an English magazine, Harriet Martineau gives some +account of her conversations, when in America in 1835, with +Chief-Justice Marshall and Mr. Madison. These men then represented the +old ideas of the Republic and of Virginia as it had been. The following +extract fully declares their opinions:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>'When I knew Chief-Justice Marshall he was eighty-three—as +bright-eyed and warm-hearted as ever, while as dignified a judge as +ever filled the highest seat in the highest court of any country. +He said he had seen Virginia the leading State for half his life; +he had seen her become the second, and sink to be (I think) the +fifth.</p> + +<p>'Worse than this, there was no arresting her decline if her +citizens did not put an end to slavery; and he saw no signs of any +intention to do so, east of the mountains, at least. He had seen +whole groups of estates, populous in his time, lapse into waste. He +had seen agriculture exchanged for human stock-breeding; and he +keenly felt the degradation.</p> + +<p>'The forest was returning over the fine old estates, and the wild +creatures which had not been seen for generations were reäppearing, +numbers and wealth were declining, and education and manners were +degenerating. It would not have surprised him to be told that on +that soil would the main battles be fought when the critical day +should come which he foresaw.</p> + +<p>'To Mr. Madison despair was not easy. He had a cheerful and +sanguine temper, and if there was one thing rather than another +which he had learned to consider secure, it was the Constitution +which he had so large a share in making. Yet he told me that he was +nearly in despair, and that he had been quite so till the +Colonization Society arose.</p> + +<p>'Rather than admit to himself that the South must be laid waste by +a servile war, or the whole country by a civil war, he strove to +believe that millions of negroes could be carried to Africa, and so +got rid of. I need not speak of the weakness of such a hope. What +concerns us now is that he saw and described to me, when I was his +guest, the dangers and horrors of the state of society in which he +was living.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span></p> + +<p>'He talked more of slavery than of all other subjects together, +returning to it morning, noon, and night. He said that the clergy +perverted the Bible because it was altogether against slavery; that +the colored population was increasing faster than the white; and +that the state of morals was such as barely permitted society to +exist.</p> + +<p>'Of the issue of the conflict, whenever it should occur, there +could, he said, be no doubt. A society burdened with a slave system +could make no permanent resistance to an unencumbered enemy; and he +was astonished at the fanaticism which blinded some Southern men to +so clear a certainty.</p> + +<p>'Such was Mr. Madison's opinion in 1855.'</p></div> + +<p>But the trial has come at last, and it is for the country to decide +whether the South is to be allowed to secede, or to remain strengthened +by their slaves, planting and warring against us until our own resources +becoming exhausted, Europe can at an opportune moment intervene. But +will that be the end? Will not Russia revenge the Crimea by aiding +us—will not Austria be dismembered, France on fire, Southern Europe in +arms, and one storm of anarchy sweep over the world? It is all possible, +should we persevere in fighting the enemy with one hand and feeding him +with the other.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>There is such a thing as silly theatrical sentiment, and much of it is +shown in the vulgar, melodramatic acting out of popular songs, as shown +by the subjoined brace of anecdotes:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>: I have had, in my time, not a little experience +of jailer, warden, and, of late, camp life, and would like to say a +word about silly, misplaced sympathy, of which I have witnessed +enough in all conscience.</p> + +<p>At one time, while officering it in a prison not one thousand +miles—as the penny papers say—from the State of New-York, we +received into our hands about as degraded a specimen of the <i>genus</i> +'murderer,' as it was ever my lot to see. He had killed a woman in +a most cowardly and cruel manner, and was, to my way of thinking, +(and I was used to such fellows,) about as brutal-looking a human +beast as one need look at. However, we had hardly got him into a +cell, before a carriage drove up to the door, and a +splendidly-dressed lady, with a basket of oranges and a five-dollar +camellia bouquet, asked to see the prisoner.</p> + +<p>'<i>Do</i> let me see him!' she cried, 'I read of him in the newspaper, +and, guilty as he is, I would fain contribute my mite to soothe +him.'</p> + +<p>'He is a rough customer, marm,' said my assistant.</p> + +<p>'Yes, but you know what the poet says:</p> + +<p>"Bring flowers to the captive's lonely cell."</p> + +<p>So she went in. She took but small notice of the prisoner, however, +arranged her bouquet, left her oranges, and departed. It occurred +to me to promptly search the bouquet for a concealed note or file, +so I entered the cell as she went out. I found Shocky, as we called +him, sucking away at an orange, and staring at the flowers in great +amazement. Finally, he spoke.</p> + +<p>'Wat in ——'s the use a sendin' them things to a feller fur, +unless they give him the rum with 'em?'</p> + +<p>'What do you suppose they are meant for?' I replied.</p> + +<p>'Why, to make bitters with, in course. An't them come-a-mile +flowers?'</p> + +<p>The second is something of the same sort. Not long since, a lot of +us—I am an H. P., 'high private,' now—were quartered in several +wooden tenements, and in the inner room of one lay the <i>corpus</i> of +a young Secesh officer, awaiting burial. The news soon spread to a +village not far off. Down came tearing a sentimental and not +bad-looking specimen of a Virginny dame.</p> + +<p>'Let me kiss him for his mother!' she cried, as I interrupted her +progress. '<i>Do</i> let me kiss him for his mother!'</p> + +<p>'Kiss whom?'</p> + +<p>'The dear little lieutenant, the one who lies dead within. P'int +him out to me, sir, if you please. I never saw him, but—oh!'</p> + +<p>I led her through a room in which Lieutenant ——, of Philadelphia, +lay stretched out on an up-turned trough, fast asleep. Supposing +him to be the 'article' sought for, she rushed up, and exclaiming, +'Let me kiss him for his mother,' approached her lips to his +forehead. What was her amazement when the 'corpse,' ardently +clasping its arms around her, returned the salute vigorously, and +exclaimed:</p> + +<p>'Never mind the old lady, Miss, go it on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span> your own account. I +haven't the slightest objection!'</p> + +<p>Sentiment is a fine thing, Mr. Editor, but it should be handled as +one handles the spiked guns which the rebels leave behind, loaded +with percussion-caps—very carefully.</p> + +<p>Yours amazingly,</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Warden</span>.</p></div> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Readers who are desirous of seeing Ravenshoe fully played out will +please glance at the following:</p> + + +<h3>RAVENSHOE—ITS SEQUEL.</h3> + +<h4>PREFACE</h4> + +<p>There are those who assert that the doctrine of Compensation is utterly +ignored in Ravenshoe. They instance the rewarding Welter, a coarse, +brutal scoundrel and sensual beast, with wealth and title, and such +honor as the author can confer, as an insult to every rational reader; +nor can they think Charles Ravenshoe, or Horton, who endeavored right +manfully to support himself, repaid for this exertion, and for bearing +up stoutly against his troubles, by being compelled 'to pass a dull, +settled, dreaming, melancholy old age' as an invalid.</p> + +<p>It may naturally be thought that a residence of years in Australia, the +mother of Botany Bay, where not exactly the best of American society +could be found, has had its effect in embittering even an Englishman +against Americans, and of embroiling him with his own countrymen; +therefore the reader must smile at this principle of rewarding vice and +punishing virtue; it is what Ravenshoe pretends to be—something novel.</p> + +<p>The extreme dissatisfaction of the public with this volume calls +imperatively for a satisfactory conclusion to it, consequently a sequel +is now presented in what the Australians call the most 'bloody dingo<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> +politeful' manner.</p> + + +<h4>CHAPTER I.</h4> + +<p>A small boy with a dirty face met another small boy similarly +caparisoned. Said the first: 'Eech! you don' know how much twicet two +is?'</p> + +<p>'You are a ——' (we suppress the word he used; suffice it to say, it +may be defined, 'a kind of harp much used by the ancients!')—'twicet +two is four. Hmm!' replied the second.</p> + +<p>The reader may not see it, but the writer does, that this trivial +conversation has important bearing on the fate of William Ravenshoe, the +wrongful-rightful, rightful-wrongful, etcetera, heir. For further +particulars, see the Bohemian Girl, where a babe is changed by a nurse +in order that the nurse may have change for it.</p> + +<p>When Charles Horton Ravenshoe returned once more to his paternal acres, +it will be remembered he settled two thousand pounds a year, rent-charge +on Ravenshoe, in favor of William Ravenshoe. Over and above this, +Charles enjoyed from this estate and from what Lord Saltire (Satire?) +willed him, no less than fourteen thousand pounds; his settlement on +William was therefore by no means one half of the income, consequently +unfair to the exiled Catholic half-brother.</p> + +<p>After the death of Father Mackworth he was followed by a gentleman in +crow-colored raiment, named Father Macksham, who accompanied William, +the ex-heir, to a small cottage, where the plots inside were much larger +than the grass-plots outside, and where Father Macksham hatched the +following fruit, which only partially ripened. He determined to +overthrow Welter by the means of Adelaide, then overthrow Adelaide by +means of Charles Ravenshoe, then overthrow the latter by his +illegitimate brother, and finally throw the last over in favor of the +Jesuits. He occupied all his spare moments preparing the fireworks.</p> + + +<h4>CHAPTER II.</h4> + +<p>The reader will remember that Adelaide, wife of Welter, or Lord Ascot, +broke her back while attempting to jump a fence, mounted on the back of +the Irish mare 'Molly Asthore,' but the reader does not know that Welter +was the cause of his wife's fall, and that he actually hired a groom to +scare 'Molly Asthore' so that she would take the fence, and also his +wife out of this vale of tears. (This sentence I know is not +grammatical; who cares?) Welter, when he saw that his wife was not +killed, was furious. His large red brutal face turned to purple; he +smote his prize-fighting chest with his huge fists, he lowered his +eyebrows until he resembled an infuriated hog, and then he retired to +his house and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span> drank a small box of claret—pints—twenty-four to the +dozen!</p> + +<p>Adelaide, too, was furious, but she sent privately to London for Surgeon +Forsups—he came; then in the night season, unbeknown to Welter, an +operation was performed, and behold! in the morning light lay Adelaide, +tall, straight, commanding, proud—well as ever! in fact, straight as a +shingle. Do you think she wanted to choke Welter? I do.</p> + + +<h4>CHAPTER III.</h4> + +<p>Nature was in one of her gloomiest moods, the clouds were the color of +burnt treacle, the sombre rain pelted the dismal streets; mud was +everywhere, desolation, misery, wet boots, and ruined hats. In the midst +of such a scene, Welter, Lord Ascot, died of apoplexy in the throat, +caused by a rope. Who did the deed? Owls on the battlements answer me. +Did he do it himself or was it done for him? Shrieking elements respond. +Echo answers: Justice!</p> + + +<h4>CHAPTER IV.</h4> + +<p>Ravenshoe bay again. Sunlight on the waters; clear blue sky; all nature +smiling serenely; Charles Ravenshoe—I adore the man when I think of +him—landing a forty-four-pound salmon; ruddy with health, joyous in +countenance; two curly-headed boys screaming for joy; his wife, 'she +that was' (Americanism picked up among Yorkshiremen in Australia) Mary +Corby, laughing heartily at the <i>tout ensemble</i>. William Ravenshoe +affectionately helping Charles with a landing-net to secure the salmon, +thus speaks to him:</p> + +<p>'Charles, this idea of yours of dividing the 'state evenly between us is +noble, but I shall not accept it. I would like a small piece of the tail +of this salmon for dinner, though, if it will not rob you.'</p> + +<p>'William, halves in every thing between us is my motto; so say no more +about it. The delightful news that Father Macksham has at last fallen a +victim to his love of gain, while trying to run a cargo of cannons, +powder, and Enfield rifles to the confederate States, IN DIRECT +OPPOSITION TO HER BLESSED MAJESTY'S COMMANDS, rejoices my heart to that +extent that I exclaim, perish all Jesuits! Now that you have turned +Protestant, and are thoroughly out of the woods of medieval romance, I +may say,</p> + + +<p class='center'>'The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold,'</p> + + +<p>and quote Tennyson, like poor Cuthbert, all day long. Who is there to +hinder?'</p> + +<p>'No one,' replied William, with all the warmth of heart of a man who was +once a groom and then a bridegroom. 'No one. I saw Adelaide this morning +a-carrying flannels and rum to the poor of the parish; how thoroughly +she has reformed, I'm sure.'</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Reader, let us pause here and dwell on the respective merits of the +Bohemian Girl, and Father Rodin in the <i>Mysteries of Paris</i>, compared +with the characters described in <i>Ravenshoe</i>. Let us ask if an English +novel can be written without allusion to the Derby or Life at Oxford, +the accumulation of pounds or the squandering of pounds, rightful heirs +or wrongful heirs, false marriages, or the actions of spoiled children +generally? An answer is looked for.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>'And further this deponent sayeth not.'</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>The Nashville <i>Union</i>—the new Union newspaper of that city—is +emphatically 'an institution,' and a dashing one at that. Its every +column is like the charge of a column of infantry into the unhallowed +Rebel-ry of Disunion. 'Don't compromise your loyalty with rebels,' says +the <i>Union</i>, 'until you are ready to compromise your soul with the +devil.'</p> + +<p>Some of the humor of this brave pioneer sheet is decidedly piquant. +Among its quizzical literary efforts the review of Rev. Dr. McFerrin's +<i>Confederate Primer</i> is good enough to form the initial of a series. We +make the following extracts:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>'Nothing is more worthy of being perpetuated than valuable +contributions to literature. The literature of a nation is its +crown of glory, whose reflected light shines far down the +swift-rolling waves of time and gladdens the eyes of remote +generations. This beautiful and—to our notion—finely-expressed +sentiment was suggested to our mind in turning over the pages of +Rev. Dr. McFerrin's <i>Confederate Primer</i>, which we briefly noticed +yesterday. We feel that we then passed too hastily over a work so +grand in its conception.... The <i>Primer</i>, after giving the alphabet +in due form, offers some little rhymes for youngsters, which are +per<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span>fect nosegays of sentiment, of which the following will serve +as samples:</p> + +<p> +N.<br /> +<br /> +At Nashville's fall<br /> +We sinned all.<br /> +<br /> +T.<br /> +<br /> +At Number Ten<br /> +We sinned again.<br /> +<br /> +F.<br /> +<br /> +Thy purse to mend,<br /> +Old Floyd, attend.<br /> +<br /> +L.<br /> +<br /> +Abe Lincoln bold,<br /> +Our ports doth hold.<br /> +<br /> +D.<br /> +<br /> +Jeff Davis tells a lie,<br /> +And so must you and I.<br /> +<br /> +I.<br /> +<br /> +Isham doth mourn<br /> +His case forlorn.<br /> +<br /> +P.<br /> +<br /> +Brave Pillow's flight<br /> +Is out of sight.<br /> +<br /> +B.<br /> +<br /> +Buell doth play,<br /> +And after slay.<br /> +<br /> +O.<br /> +<br /> +Yon Oak will be the gallows-tree<br /> +Of Richmond's fallen majesty.<br /> +</p> + +</div> + +<p>Governor Ishain Harris 'catches it' in the following extract from the +Easy Reading Lessons for Children:</p> + + +<h3>'LESSON FIRST.</h3> + +<h4>'THE SMART DIX-IE BOY.</h4> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>'Once there was a lit-tle boy, on-ly four years old. His name was +Dix-ie. His fa-ther's name was I-sham, and his moth-er's name was +All-sham. Dix-ie was ver-y smart, He could drink whis-ky, fight +chick-ens, play po-ker, and cuss his moth-er. When he was on-ly two +years old, he could steal su-gar, hook pre-serves, drown kit-tens, +and tell lies like a man. By and by Dix-ie died, and went to the +bad place. But the dev-il would not let Dix-ie stay there, for he +said: 'When you get big, Dix-ie, you would be head-devil yourself.' +All little Reb-els ought to be like Dix-ie, and so they will, if +they will stud-y the <i>Con-fed-e-rate Prim-er</i>.'</p></div> + +<p>Very good, too, is the powerful and thrilling sermon on the 'Curse of +Cowardice,' delivered by the Rev. Dr. Meroz Armageddon Baldwin, from +which we take 'the annexed:'</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>'Then there is Gideon Pillow, who has undertaken a contract for +digging that 'last ditch,' of which you have heard so much. I am +afraid that the white 'feathers will fly' whenever <i>that</i> Case is +opened, and that Pillow will give us the slip. 'The sword of the +Lord' isn't 'the sword of Gideon' Pillow—<i>that's</i> certain—so I +shall bolster him up no longer. Gideon is 'a cuss,' and a 'cuss of +cowardice.''</p></div> + +<p>We are glad to see that the good cause has so stalwart and keen a +defender in Tennessee.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>We have our opinion that the following anecdote is true. If not, it is +'well found'—or founded.</p> + +<p>Not long since, an eminent 'Conserve' of Boston was arguing with a +certain eminent official in Washington, drilling away, of course, on the +old pro-slavery, pro-Southern, pro-give-it-up platform.</p> + +<p>'But what <i>can</i> you do with the Southerners?' he remarked, for 'the +frequenth' time. 'You can't conquer them—you can't reconcile them—you +can't bring them back—you can't do any thing with them.'</p> + +<p>'But we may <i>annihilate</i> them,' was the crushing reply.</p> + +<p>And <span class="smcap">Conserve</span> took his hat and departed.</p> + +<p>It is, when we come to facts, really remarkable that it has not occurred +to the world that there <i>can</i> be but one solution to a dispute which has +gone so far. <i>There is no stopping this war.</i> Secession is an +impossibility. If we <i>willed</i> it, we could not prevent 'an institutional +race' from absorbing one which has no accretive principle of growth. It +is thought, as we write, that during the week preceding July 4th, +<i>seventy thousand</i> of the Secession army perished! They are exhausting, +annihilating themselves; and by whom will the vacancy be filled? Not by +the children of States which, under the old system, fell behindhand in +population. By whom, then? By Northern men and European emigrants, of +course.</p> + +<p>But European intervention? If Louis Napoleon wants to keep his crown—if +England wishes Europe to remain quiet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span>—if they both dread our good +friend Russia, who in event of a war would 'annex,' for aught we can +see, all Austria and an illimitable share of the East—if they wish to +avoid such an upstirring, riot, and infernal carnival of revolution as +the world never saw—they will let us alone.</p> + +<p>The London <i>Herald</i> declares that 'America is a nuisance among nations!' +When they undertake to meddle with us, they will find us one. We would +not leave them a ship on the sea or a seaboard town un-ruined. The whole +world would wail one wild ruin, and there should be the smoke as of +nations, when despotism should dare to lay its hand on the sacred cause +of freedom. For we of the North are living and dying in that cause which +never yet went backward, and we shall prevail, though the powers of all +Europe and all the powers of darkness should ally against us. Let them +come. They do but bring grapes to the wine-press of the Lord; and it +will be a bloody vintage which will be pressed forth in that day, as the +great cause goes marching on.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Let no one imagine that our military draft has been one whit too great. +Our great folly hitherto has been to underrate the power of the enemy. +In the South every male who can bear arms is now either bearing them or +otherwise directly aiding the rebellion. When the sheriffs of every +county in the seceding States made their returns to their Secretary of +War, they reported one million four hundred thousand men capable of +bearing arms. And they have the arms and will use them. It is 'an united +rising of the people,' such as the world has seldom seen.</p> + +<p>But then it is <i>all</i> they can do—it is the last card and the <i>last</i> +man, and if we make one stupendous effort, we must inevitably crush it. +There is no other course—it is drag or be dragged, hammer or anvil now. +If we do not beat <i>them</i> thoroughly and completely, they will make us +rue the day that ever we were born.</p> + +<p>The South is stronger than we thought, and its unity and ferocity add to +its strength. It will never be conciliated—it must be crushed. When we +have gained the victory, we can be what our foes never were to +us—generous and merciful.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>A GENTLEMAN of Massachusetts, who has held a position in McClellan's +army that gave him an opportunity to know whereof he speaks, states that +for weeks, while the army on the Peninsula were in a grain-growing +country, surrounded by fields of wheat and oats belonging to well-known +rebels, the Commissary Department was not allowed to turn its cattle +into a rich pasturage of young grain, from the fear of offending the +absent rebel owners, or of using in any way the property of Our Southern +Brethren in arms against us. The result was, that the cattle kept with +the army for the use of our hard-worked soldiers, were penned up, and +half-starved on the forage carried in the regular subsistence trains, +and the men got mere skin and bones for beef.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>So endeth the month. The rest with the next. But may we, in conclusion, +beg sundry kind correspondents to have patience? Time is scant with us, +and labor fast and hard. Our editorial friends who have kindly cheered +us by applauding 'the outspoken and straightforward young magazine,' +will accept our most grateful thanks. It has seldom happened to any +journal to be so genially and <i>warmly</i> commended as we have been since +our entrance on the stormy field of political discussion.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> The <i>dingo</i>, or native dog of Australia, looks like a cross +between the fox or wolf and the shepherd-dog; they generally hunt in +packs, and destroy great numbers of sheep. I have never eaten one.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + + +<h1>THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY</h1> + +<p><span class="smcap">The Continental Monthly</span> has passed its experimental ordeal, and +stands firmly established in popular regard. It was started at a period +when any new literary enterprise was deemed almost foolhardy, but the +publisher believed that the time had arrived for just such a Magazine. +Fearlessly advocating the doctrine of ultimate and gradual Emancipation, +for the sake of the <span class="smcap">Union</span> and the <span class="smcap">White Man</span>, it has +found favor in quarters where censure was expected, and patronage where +opposition only was looked for. While holding firmly to its <i>own +opinions</i>, it has opened its pages to <span class="smcap">POLITICAL WRITERS</span> <i>of +widely different views</i>, and has made a feature of employing the +literary labors of the <i>younger</i> race of American writers. How much has +been gained by thus giving, practically, the fullest freedom to the +expression of opinion, and by the infusion of fresh blood into +literature, has been felt from month to month in its constantly +increasing circulation.</p> + +<p>The most eminent of our Statesmen have furnished <span class="smcap">The +Continental</span> many of its political articles, and the result is, it +has not given labored essays fit only for a place in ponderous +encyclopedias, but fresh, vigorous, and practical contributions on men +and things as they exist.</p> + +<p>It will be our effort to go on in the path we have entered, and as a +guarantee of the future, we may point to the array of live and brilliant +talent which has brought so many encomiums on our Magazine. The able +political articles which have given it so much reputation will be +continued in each issue, together with the new Novel by Richard B. +Kimball, the eminent author of the 'Under-Currents of Wall-Street,' 'St. +Leger,' etc., entitled.</p> + + +<h4>WAS HE SUCCESSFUL?</h4> + +<p>An account of the Life and Conduct of Hiram Meeker, one of the leading +men in the mercantile community, and 'a bright and shining light' in the +Church, recounting what he did, and how he made his money. This work +excels the previous brilliant productions of this author. In the present +number is also commenced a new Serial by the author of 'Among the +Pines,' entitled.</p> + + +<h4>A MERCHANT'S STORY,</h4> + +<p>which will depict Southern <i>white</i> society, and be a truthful history of +some eminent Northern merchants who are largely in 'the cotton trade and +sugar line.'</p> + +<p>The <span class="smcap">Union</span>—The Union of <span class="smcap">all the States</span>—that indicates +our politics. To be content with no ground lower than the highest—that +is the standard of our literary character.</p> + +<p>We hope all who are friendly to the spread of our political views, and +all who are favorable to the diffusion of a live, fresh, and energetic +literature, will lend us their aid to increase our circulation. There is +not one of our readers who may not influence one or two more, and there +is in every town in the loyal States some active person whose time might +be justifiably employed in procuring subscribers to our work. To +encourage such to act for us we offer the following very liberal</p> + + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<h4>TERMS TO CLUBS.</h4> + +<div class='centered'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="1" width="70%" cellspacing="0" summary="Subscription Costs"> +<tr><td align='left'>Two copies for one year,</td><td align='left'>Five dollars.</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Three copies for one year,</td><td align='left'>Six dollars.</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Six copies for one year,</td><td align='left'>Eleven dollars.</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Eleven copies for one year,</td><td align='left'>Twenty dollars.</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Twenty copies for one year,</td><td align='left'>Thirty-six dollars.</td></tr> +<tr><td colspan="2" align='center'>PAID IN ADVANCE</td><td align='left'> </td></tr> +</table></div> + +<p class='center'><i>Postage, Thirty-six cents a year</i>, to be paid <span class="smcap">by the +Subscriber</span>.</p> + +<h4>SINGLE COPIES.</h4> + +<p class='center'>Three dollars a year, <span class="smcap">in advance</span>. <i>Postage paid by the +Publisher</i>.</p> + +<p class='author'>J. R. GILMORE, 532 Broadway, New-York,<br /> + and 110 Tremont Street, Boston.</p> + + <p class='center'>CHARLES T. EVANS, 532 Broadway, New-York, General Agent.</p> + +<blockquote><div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgfinger.jpg" alt="pointing finger" title="pointing finger" /></div><p> Any person sending us Three Dollars, for one year's subscription to "The +Continental," commencing with the July number, will receive the Magazine and +"Among the Pines," cloth edition; both free of postage.</p></blockquote> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span></p> + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<p><br /><br /></p> + + + +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/imgffl.jpg" alt="Finest Farming Lands" title="Finest Farming Lands" /></div> + + +<h3>EQUAL TO ANY IN THE WORLD!!!</h3> + +<h4>MAY BE PROCURED</h4> + +<h3>At FROM $8 to $12 PER ACRE,</h3> + +<p class='center'>Near Markets, Schools, Railroads, Churches, and all the blessings of +Civilization.</p> + +<h4>1,200,000 Acres, in Farms of 40, 80, 120, 160 Acres and upwards, in +ILLINOIS, the Garden State of America.</h4> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<blockquote><p>The Illinois Central Railroad Company offer, ON LONG CREDIT, the +beautiful and fertile PRAIRIE LANDS lying along the whole line of their +Railroad. 700 MILES IN LENGTH, upon the most Favorable Terms for +enabling Farmers, Manufacturers, Mechanics and Workingmen to make for +themselves and their families a competency, and a HOME they can call +THEIR OWN, as will appear from the following statements:</p></blockquote> + +<h4>ILLINOIS.</h4> + +<p>Is about equal in extent to England, with a population of 1,722,666, and +a soil capable of supporting 20,000,000. No State in the Valley of the +Mississippi offers so great an inducement to the settler as the State of +Illinois. There is no part of the world where all the conditions of +climate and soil so admirably combine to produce those two great +staples, <span class="smcap">Corn</span> and <span class="smcap">Wheat</span>.</p> + +<h4>CLIMATE.</h4> + +<p>Nowhere can the Industrious farmer secure such immediate results from +his labor as on these deep, rich, loamy soils, cultivated with so much +ease. The climate from the extreme southern part of the State to the +Terre Haute, Alton and St. Louis Railroad, a distance of nearly 200 +miles, is well adapted to Winter.</p> + +<h4>WHEAT, CORN, COTTON, TOBACCO.</h4> + +<p>Peaches, Pears, Tomatoes, and every variety of fruit and vegetables is +grown in great abundance, from which Chicago and other Northern markets +are furnished from four to six weeks earlier than their immediate +vicinity. Between the Terre Haute, Alton & St. Louis Railway and the +Kankakee and Illinois Rivers, (a distance of 115 miles on the Branch, +and 136 miles on the Main Trunk,) lies the great Corn and Stock raising +portion of the State.</p> + +<h4>THE ORDINARY YIELD</h4> + +<p>of Corn is from 60 to 80 bushels per acre. Cattle, Horses, Mules, Sheep +and Hogs are raised here at a small cost, and yield large profits. It is +believed that no section of country presents greater inducements for +Dairy Farming than the Prairies of Illinois, a branch of farming to +which but little attention has been paid, and which must yield sure +profitable results. Between the Kankakee and Illinois Rivers, and +Chicago and Dunleith, (a distance of 56 miles on the Branch and 147 +miles by the Main Trunk,) Timothy Hay, Spring Wheat, Corn, &c., are +produced in great abundance.</p> + +<h4>AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS.</h4> + +<p>The Agricultural products of Illinois are greater than those of any +other State. The Wheat crop of 1861 was estimated at 35,000,000 bushels, +while the Corn crop yields not less than 140,000,000 bushels besides the +crop of Oats, Barley, Rye, Buckwheat, Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, +Pumpkins, Squashes, Flax, Hemp, Peas, Clover, Cabbage, Beets, Tobacco, +Sorgheim, Grapes, Peaches, Apples, &c., which go to swell the vast +aggregate of production in this fertile region. Over Four Million tons +of produce were sent out the State of Illinois during the past year.</p> + +<h4>STOCK RAISING.</h4> + +<p>In Central and Southern Illinois uncommon advantages are presented for +the extension of Stock raising. All kinds of Cattle, Horses, Mules, +Sheep, Hogs, &c., of the best breeds, yield handsome profits; large +fortunes have already been made, and the field is open for others to +enter with the fairest prospects of like results. Dairy Farming also +presents its inducements to many.</p> + +<h4>CULTIVATION OF COTTON.</h4> + +<p>The experiments in Cotton culture are of very great promise. Commencing +in latitude 39 deg. 30 min. (see Mattoon on the Branch, and Assumption +on the Main Line), the Company owns thousands of acres well adapted to +the perfection of this fibre. A settler having a family of young +children, can turn their youthful labor to a most profitable account in +the growth and perfection of this plant.</p> + +<h4>THE ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD</h4> + +<p>Traverses the whole length of the State, from the banks of the +Mississippi and Lake Michigan to the Ohio. As its name imports, the +Railroad runs through the centre of the State, and on either side of the +road along its whole length lie the lands offered for sale.</p> + +<h4>CITIES, TOWNS, MARKETS, DEPOTS.</h4> + +<p>There are Ninety-eight Depots on the Company's Railway, giving about one +every seven miles. Cities, Towns and Villages are situated at convenient +distances throughout the whole route, where every desirable commodity +may be found as readily as in the oldest cities of the Union, and where +buyers are to be met for all kinds of farm produce.</p> + +<h4>EDUCATION.</h4> + +<p>Mechanics and working-men will find the free school system encouraged by +the State, and endowed with a large revenue for the support of the +schools. Children can live in sight of the school, the college, the +church, and grow up with the prosperity of the leading State in the +Great Western Empire.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<h4>PRICES AND TERMS OF PAYMENT—ON LONG CREDIT.</h4> + +<p class='center'> +80 acres at $10 per acre, with interest at 6 per ct. annually +on the following terms:</p> + +<div class="centered"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="2" width="65%" cellspacing="0" summary="Cost of Land"> +<tr><td align='left'>Cash payment</td><td align='left'> </td><td align='right'>$48 00</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Payment</td><td align='left'>in one year</td><td align='right'>48 00</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>in two years</td><td align='right'>48 00</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>in three years</td><td align='right'>48 00</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>in four years</td><td align='right'>236 00</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>in five years</td><td align='right'>224 00</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>in six years</td><td align='right'>212 00</td></tr> +</table></div> + +<p class='center'>40 acres, at $10 00 per acre:</p> + +<div class="centered"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="2" width="65%" cellspacing="0" summary="Cost of Land"> +<tr><td align='left'>Cash payment</td><td align='left'> </td><td align='right'>$24 00</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Payment</td><td align='left'>in one year</td><td align='right'>24 00</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>in two years</td><td align='right'>24 00</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>in three years</td><td align='right'>24 00</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>in four years</td><td align='right'>118 00</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>in five years</td><td align='right'>112 00</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>in six years</td><td align='right'>106 00</td></tr> +</table></div> + + + +<p class='center'>Address <b>Land Commissioner,</b> <i>Illinois Central Railroad, Chicago, Ill.</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span></p> + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> + +<blockquote><p><span class="left">Number 10</span><span class="right">25 Cents.</span><br /></p> +</blockquote> +<h1>The<br /> +Continental<br /> +Monthly</h1> + + +<h3>Devoted To Literature and National Policy.</h3> + + + +<h3>OCTOBER, 1862.</h3> + + + +<p class='center'>NEW-YORK AND BOSTON:<br /> +J. R. GILMORE, 532 BROADWAY, NEW-YORK,<br /> +AND 110 TREMONT STREET, BOSTON.<br /> +NEW-YORK: HENRY DEXTER AND SINCLAIR TOUSEY.<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">Philadelphia: T. B. Callender and A. Winch</span>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CONTENTS_No_X" id="CONTENTS_No_X"></a>CONTENTS.—No. X.</h2> + + + +<div class='centered'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="CONTENTS"> +<tr><td align='left'>The Constitution as it Is—The Union as it Was! C. S. Henry, LL.D.,</td><td align='right'>377</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Maccaroni and Canvas. Henry P. Leland,</td><td align='right'>383</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Sir John Suckling,</td><td align='right'>397</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>London Fogs and London Poor,</td><td align='right'>404</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>A Military Nation. Charles G. Leland,</td><td align='right'>413</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Tom Winter's Story. Geo. W. Chapman,</td><td align='right'>416</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>The White Hills in October. Miss C. M. Sedgwick,</td><td align='right'>423</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-Two, U. S. Johnson,</td><td align='right'>442</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Flower-Arranging,</td><td align='right'>444</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Southern Hate of the North. Horace Greeley,</td><td align='right'>448</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>A Merchant's Story. Edmund Kirke,</td><td align='right'>451</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>The Union. Hon. Robert J. Walker,</td><td align='right'>457</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Our Wounded. C. K. Tuckerman,</td><td align='right'>465</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>A Southern Review. Charles G. Leland,</td><td align='right'>466</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Was He Successful? Richard B. Kimball,</td><td align='right'>470</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Literary Notices,</td><td align='right'>478</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Editor's Table,</td><td align='right'>481</td></tr> +</table></div> + + + +<h3>ANNOUNCEMENT.</h3> + +<p>The Proprietors of <span class="smcap">The Continental Monthly</span>, warranted by its +great success, have resolved to increase its influence and usefulness by +the following changes:</p> + +<p>The Magazine has become the property of an association of men of +character and large means. Devoted to the <span class="smcap">National Cause</span>, it +will ardently and unconditionally support the <span class="smcap">Union</span>. Its scope +will be enlarged by articles relating to our public defenses, Army and +Navy, gunboats, railroads, canals, finance, and currency. The cause of +gradual emancipation and colonization will be cordially sustained. The +literary character of the Magazine will be improved, and nothing which +talent, money, and industry combined can achieve, will be omitted.</p> + +<p>The political department will be controlled by Hon. <span class="smcap">Robert J. +Walker</span> and Hon. <span class="smcap">Frederic P. Stanton</span>, of Washington, D.C. +Mr. <span class="smcap">Walker</span>, after serving nine years as Senator, and four years +as Secretary of the Treasury, was succeeded in the Senate by +<span class="smcap">Jefferson Davis</span>. Mr. <span class="smcap">Stanton</span> served ten years in +Congress, acting as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee and of Naval +Affairs. Mr. <span class="smcap">Walker</span> was succeeded as Governor of Kansas by Mr. +<span class="smcap">Stanton</span>, and both were displaced by Mr. <span class="smcap">Buchanan</span>, for +refusing to force slavery upon that people by fraud and forgery. The +literary department of the Magazine will be under the control of +<span class="smcap">Charles Godfrey Leland</span> of Boston, and <span class="smcap">Edmund Kirke</span> of +New-York. Mr. <span class="smcap">Leland</span> is the present accomplished Editor of the +Magazine. Mr. <span class="smcap">Kirke</span> is one of its constant contributors, but +better known as the author of 'Among the Pines' the great picture true +to life, of Slavery as it is.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">The Continental</span>, while retaining all the old corps of writers, +who have given it so wide a circulation, will be reinforced by new +contributors, greatly distinguished as statesmen, scholars, and savans.</p> + + +<p>Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by <span class="smcap">James R. +Gilmore</span>, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United +States for the Southern District of New-York.</p> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, + September, 1862, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY *** + +***** This file should be named 20647-h.htm or 20647-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/6/4/20647/ + +Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Janet Blenkinship and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net +(This file was produced from images generously made +available by Cornell University Digital Collections) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + + +</pre> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/20647-h/images/imgffl.jpg b/20647-h/images/imgffl.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..28db1fc --- /dev/null +++ b/20647-h/images/imgffl.jpg diff --git a/20647-h/images/imgfinger.jpg b/20647-h/images/imgfinger.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..52e4dc6 --- /dev/null +++ b/20647-h/images/imgfinger.jpg diff --git a/20647.txt b/20647.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8a9ef5c --- /dev/null +++ b/20647.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9482 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, +September, 1862, by Various + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 + Devoted to Literature and National Policy. + +Author: Various + +Release Date: February 22, 2007 [EBook #20647] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY *** + + + + +Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Janet Blenkinship and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net +(This file was produced from images generously made +available by Cornell University Digital Collections) + + + + + + + + + + + +THE + +CONTINENTAL MONTHLY: + +DEVOTED TO + +LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY + + +VOL. II.--SEPTEMBER, 1862.--NO. III. + + + * * * * * + + + + +HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE. + + +The death of Henry Thomas Buckle, at this period of his career, is no +ordinary calamity to the literary and philosophical world. Others have +been cut short in the midst of a great work, but their books being +narrative merely, may close at almost any period, and be complete; or +others after them may take up the pen and conclude that which was so +abruptly terminated. So it was with Macaulay; he was fascinating, and +his productions were literally devoured by readers of elevated taste, +though they disagreed almost entirely with his conclusions. His volumes +were read--as one reads Dickens, or Holmes, or De Quincey--to amuse in +leisure hours. + +But such are not the motives with which we take up the ponderous tomes +of the historian of Civilization in England. He had no heroes to +immortalize by extravagant eulogy, no prejudices seeking vent to cover +the name of any man with infamy. He knew no William to convert into a +demi-god; no Marlborough who was the embodiment of all human vices. His +mind, discarding the ordinary prejudices of the historian, took a wider +range, and his researches were not into the transactions of a particular +monarch or minister, as such, but into the _laws_ of human action, and +their results upon the civilization of the race. Hence, while he wrote +history, he plunged into all the depths of philosophy; and thus it is, +that his work, left unfinished by himself, can never be completed by +another. It is a work which will admit no broken link from its +commencement to its conclusion. + +Mr. Buckle was born in London, in the early part of the year 1824, and +was consequently about thirty-eight years of age at the time of his +death. His father was a wealthy gentleman of the metropolis, and +thoroughly educated, and the historian was an only son. Devoted to +literature himself, it is not surprising that the parent spared neither +money nor labor to educate his child. He did not, however, follow the +usual course; did not hamper the youthful mind by the narrow routine of +the English academy, nor did he make him a Master of Arts at Oxford or +Cambridge. + +His early education was superintended by his father directly, but +afterward private teachers were employed. But Mr. Buckle was by nature a +close student, and much that he possessed he acquired without a tutor, +as his energetic, self-reliant nature rendered him incapable of ever +seeing insurmountable difficulties before him. By this means he became +what the students of Oxford rarely are, both learned and liberal. As he +mingled freely with the people, during his youth, a democratic sympathy +entwined itself with his education, and is manifested in every page of +his writings. + +Mr. Buckle never married. After he had commenced his great work, he +found no time to enjoy society, no hours of leisure and repose. His +whole soul was engaged in the accomplishment of one great purpose, and +nothing which failed to contribute directly to the object nearest his +heart, received a moment's consideration. He collected around him a +library of twenty-two thousand volumes, all choice standard works, in +Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and English, with all of +which languages he was familiar. It was the best private collection of +books, said some one, in England. It was from this that the historian +drew that inexhaustible array of facts, and procured the countless +illustrations, with which the two volumes of his History of Civilization +abound. + +At what age he first conceived the project of writing his history, is +not yet publicly known. He never figured in the literary world previous +to the publication of his first volume. He appears to have early grasped +at more than a mere temporary fame, and determined to stake all upon a +single production. His reading was always systematic, and exceedingly +thorough; and as he early became charmed with the apparent harmony of +all nature, whether in the physical, intellectual, or moral world, he at +once commenced tracing out the laws of the universe, to which, in his +mind, all things were subject, with a view of illustrating that +beautiful harmony, every where prevailing, every where unbroken. All +this influenced every thing, 'and mind and gross matter, each performed +their parts, in relative proportions, and according to the immutable +laws of progress.' + +With a view of discussing his subject thoroughly, and establishing his +theory beyond controversy, as he believed, he proposed, before referring +to the _History of Civilization in England_, to discover, so far as +possible, all the laws of political and social economy, and establish +the relative powers and influence of the moral faculties, the intellect, +and external nature, and determine the part each takes in contributing +to the progress of the world. To this, the first volume is exclusively +devoted; and it is truly astonishing to observe the amount of research +displayed. The author is perfectly familiar, not only with a vast array +of facts of history, but with the principal discoveries of every branch +of science; and as he regards all things as a unit, he sets out by +saying that no man is competent to write history who is not familiar +with the physical universe. A fascinating writer, with a fair industry, +can write narrative, but not history. + +This is taking in a wide field; and Mr. Buckle may be regarded as +somewhat egotistic and vain; but the fact that he proves himself, in a +great degree, the possessor of the knowledge he conceives requisite, +rather than asserts it, is a sufficient vindication against all +aspersions. + +Mr. Buckle regards physical influences as the primary motive power which +produces civilization; but these influences are fixed in their nature, +and are few in number, and always operate with equal power. The capacity +of the intellect is unlimited; it grows and expands, partially impelled +by surrounding physical circumstances, and partially by its own second +suggestions, growing out of those primary impressions received from +nature. The moral influence, the historian asserts, is the weakest of +the three, which control the destiny of man. Not an axiom now current, +but was known and taught in the days of Plato, of Zoroaster, and of +Confucius; yet how wide the gap intervening between the civilization of +the different eras! Moral without intellectual culture, is nothing; but +with the latter, the former comes as a necessary sequence. + +All individual examples are rejected. As all things act in harmony, we +can only draw deductions by regarding the race in the aggregate, and +studying its progress through long periods of time. Statistics is the +basis of all generalizations, and it is only from a close comparison of +these, for ages, that the harmonious movement of all things can be +clearly proved. + +Mr. Buckle was a fatalist in every sense of the word. Marriages, deaths, +births, crime--all are regulated by Law. The moral status of a community +is illustrated by the number of depredations committed, and their +character. Following the suggestions of M. Quetelot, he brings forward +an array of figures to prove that not only, in a large community, is +there about the same number of crimes committed each year, but their +character is similar, and even the instruments employed in committing +them are nearly the same. Of course, outside circumstances modify this +slightly--such as financial failures, scarcity of bread, etc., but by a +comparison of long periods of time, these influences recur with perfect +regularity. + +It is not the individual, in any instance, who is the criminal--but +society. The murderer and the suicide are not responsible, but are +merely public executioners. Through them the depravity of the _public_ +finds vent. + +Free Will and Predestination--the two dogmas which have, more than any +others, agitated the public mind--are discussed at length. Of course he +accepts the latter theory, but under a different name. Free Will, he +contends, inevitably leads to aristocracy, and Predestination to +democracy; and the British and Scottish churches are cited as examples +of the effect of the two doctrines on ecclesiastical organizations. The +former is an aristocracy, the latter a democracy. + +No feature of Mr. Buckle's work is so prominent as its democratic +tendencies. The people, and the means by which they can be elevated, +were uppermost in his mind, and he disposes of established usages, and +aristocratic institutions, in a manner far more American than English. +It is this circumstance which has endeared him to the people of this +country, and to the liberals of Germany--the work having been translated +into German. For the same reason, he was severely criticised in England. + +Having devoted the first volume to a discussion of the laws of +civilization, it was his intention to publish two additional volumes, +illustrating them; taking the three countries in which were found +certain prominent characteristics, which he conceived could be fully +accounted for by his theories, but by no other, and above all, by none +founded upon the doctrine of free will and individual responsibility. +These countries were Spain, Scotland, and the United States--nations +which grew up under the most diverse physical influences, and which +present widely different civilizations. + +The volume treating upon Spain and Scotland has been published about a +year; and great was the indignation it created in the latter country. In +Spain it is probable that the work is unknown; but it was caught up by +the Scottish reviewers, who are shocked at any thing outside of regular +routine, and whose only employment seems to be to strangle young +authors. _Blackwood_, and the _Edinburgh Review_, contained article +after article against the 'accuser' of Scotland; but the writers, +instead of calmly sifting and disproving Mr. Buckle's untenable +theories, new into a rage, and only established two things, to the +intelligent public--their own malice and ignorance. + +Amid all this abuse, our author stood immutable. But once did he ever +condescend to notice his maligners, and then only to expose their +ignorance, at the same time pledging himself never again to refer to +their attacks. A thinking man, he could not but be fully aware that +their style, and self-evident malice, could only add to his reputation. + +As already remarked, he did not write to immortalize a hero, but to +establish an idea; did not labor to please the fancy, but to reach the +understanding; hence we read his books, not as we do the brilliant +productions of Macaulay, the smooth narratives of Prescott, or the +dramatic pages of Bancroft; but his thoughts are so well connected, and +so systematically arranged, that to read a single page, is to insure a +close study of the whole volume. We would not study him for his style, +for although fair, it is not pleasing; we can not glide over his pages +in thoughtless ease; but then, at the close of almost every paragraph, +one must pause and _think_. + +Being an original writer, Mr. Buckle naturally fell into numerous +errors; but now is not the proper time to refute them. He gives more +than due weight to the powers of nature, in the civilization of man; and +although he probably intimates the fact, yet he does _not_ add that as +the intellect is enlightened, their influences become circumscribed, and +must gradually almost entirely disappear. In the primitive state of the +race, climate, soil, food, and scenery, are all-powerful; but among an +enlightened people, the effects of heat and cold, of barren or +exceedingly productive soils, etc., are entirely modified. This omission +has given his enemies an excellent opportunity for a display of their +refutory powers, of which they have not failed to avail themselves. + +The historian is a theorist, yet no controversialist. He states his +facts, and draws his conclusions, as if no ideas different from his own +had ever been promulgated. He never attempts to show the fallacies of +any other author, but readily understands that if he establishes his +system of philosophy, all contrary ones must fall. How fortunate it +would have been for the human race, if all innovators and reformers had +done the same! + +That which adds to the regrets occasioned by his loss, which must be +entertained by every American, is the circumstance that his forthcoming +volume was to be devoted to the social and political condition of the +United States, as an example of a country in which existed a general +diffusion of knowledge. Knowing, as all his readers do, that his +sympathies are democratic, and in favor of the elevation of the masses, +we had a right to expect a vindication-the first we ever had--from an +English source. At the time of his death he was traveling through Europe +and Asia for his health, intending to arrive in this country in autumn, +to procure facts as a basis for his third volume, and the last of his +introduction. + +Although his work is an unfinished one, it will remain a lasting +monument to the industry of its author. He has done enough to exhibit +the necessity of studying and writing history, henceforth as a +_science_; and of replacing the chaotic fragments of narrative, called +history, with which the world abounds, by a systematic statement of +facts, and philosophical deductions. Some other author, with sufficient +energy and industry, will--not finish the work of Mr. Buckle, but--write +another in which the faults of the original will be corrected, and the +omissions filled; who will go farther in defining the relative +influences of the three powers which control civilization, during the +different stages of human progress. + + + + +AN ANGEL ON EARTH. + + Die when you may, you will not wear + At heaven's court a form more fair + Than beauty at your birth has given; + Keep but the lips, the eyes we see, + The voice we hear, and you will be + An angel ready-made for heaven. + + + + +THE MOLLY O'MOLLY PAPERS. + +VIII + + +Better than wealth, better than hosts of friends, better than genius, is +a mind that finds enjoyment in little things--that sucks honey from the +blossom of the weed as well as from the rose--that is not too dainty to +enjoy coarse, everyday fare. I am thankful that, though not born under a +lucky star, I wasn't born under a melancholy one; that, though there +were at my christening no kind fairies to bestow on me all the blessings +of life--there was no malignant elf to 'mingle a curse with every +blessing.' I'd rather have a few drops of pure sweet than an overflowing +cup tinctured with bitterness. + +Not that sorrow has never blown her chill breath on my spirit--yet it +has never been so iced over that it would not here and there bubble +forth with a song of gladness.... There are depths of woe that I have +never fathomed, or rather, to which I have never sunken--for there are +no line and plummet to sound the dreary depths--yet the waves have +overwhelmed me, as every human being, but I soon rose above them. + + 'One by one thy griefs shall meet thee, + Do not fear an armed band; + One shall fade as others greet thee-- + Shadows passing through the land.' + +I have found this true--I know there are some to whom it is not +true--that, though sorrows come not to them 'in battalions,' the shadow +of the one huge Grief is ever on their path, or on their heart; that at +their down-sittings and their up-risings it is with them, even darkening +to them the night, and making them almost curse the sunshine; for it is +ever between them and it--not a mere shadow, nor yet a substance, but a +_vacuum of light_, casting also a shadow. Neither substance nor shadow, +it must be a phantom--it may be of a dead sin--and against such, +exorcism avails. I opine this exorcism lies in no cabalistic words, no +crossing of the forehead, no holy name, in nothing that one can do unto +or for himself, but in entire self-forgetfulness--in doing for, in +sympathizing with, others. So shall this Grief step aside from your +path, get away from between you and the sunshine, till finally it shall +have vanished. + +I know--not, however, by experience--that a great _sorrow-berg_, with +base planted in the under-current of a man's being, has been borne at a +fearful rate, right up against all his nobly-built hopes and projects, +making a complete wreck of them. May God help him then! But must his +being ever after be like the lonely Polar Sea on which no bark was ever +launched? + +But surely we have troubles enough without borrowing from the future or +the past, as we constantly do. It is often said, it is a good thing that +we can't look into the future. One would think that that mysterious +future, on which we are the next moment to enter, in which we are to +live our everyday life--one would think it a store-house of evils. Do +you expect no good--are there for you no treasures there? + +How often life has been likened to a journey, a pilgrimage, with its +deserts to cross, its mountains to climb!... The road to---- Lake, +distant from my home some eight or ten miles, partly lies through a +mountain pass. You drive a few miles--and a beautiful drive it is, with +its pines and hemlocks, their dark foliage contrasting with the blue +sky--on either hand high mountains; now at your left, then at your +right, and again at your left runs now swiftly over stones, now +lingering in hollows, making good fishing-places, a creek, that has come +many glad miles on its way to the river. But how are you to get over +that mountain just before you? Your horse can't draw you up its rocky, +perpendicular front! Never mind, drive along--there, the mountain is +behind you--the road has wound around it. Thus it is with many a +mountain difficulty in our way, we never have it to climb. There is now +and then one, though, that we do have to climb, and we can't be drawn or +carried up by a faithful nag, but our weary feet must toil up its steep +and rugged side. But many a pilgrim before us has climbed it, and we +will not faint on the way. 'What man has done, man may do.' ... Yet, +till I have found out to a certainty, I never will be sure that the +mountain that seemingly blocks up my way, _has not a path winding round +it_. + +Then the past.... Some one says we are happier our whole life for having +spent one pleasant day. Keats says: 'A thing of beauty is a joy +_forever_.' I believe this: to me the least enjoyment has been like a +grain of musk dropped into my being, sending its odor into all my +after-life--it may be that centuries hence it will not have lost its +fragrance. Who knows? + +But sorrows--they should, like bitter medicines, be washed down with +sweet; we should get the taste of them out of our mouth as soon as +possible. + +We are as apt to borrow trouble from the might-have-beens of our past +life as from any thing else. We mourn over the chances we've missed--the +happiness that eel-like has slipped through our fingers. This is folly; +for generally there are so many ifs in the way, that nearly all the +might-have-beens turn into couldn't-have-beens. Even if they do not, it +is well for us when we don't know them.... The object of our weary +search glides past us like Gabriel past Evangeline, so near, did we only +know it: happy is it for us if we do not, like her, too late learn it; +for + + 'Of all sad words of tongue or pen, + The saddest are these--_it might have been!_' + +So sad are they, that they would be a suitable refrain to the song of a +lost spirit. + +Well, I might have been ----, but am ---- + +MOLLY O'MOLLY. + + +IX. + +If one wishes to know how barren one's life is of events, the best way +is to try to keep a journal. I tried it in my boarding-school days. With +a few exceptions, the record of one day's outer life was sufficient for +the week; the rest might have been written _ditto, ditto_. Even then, +the events were so trifling that, like entries in a ledger, they might +have been classed as _sundries_. How I tried to get up thoughts and +feelings to make out a decent day's chronicle! How I threw in profound +remarks on what I had read, sketches of character, caricatures of the +teachers, even condescending to give the bill of fare; here, too, there +might have been a great many _dittos_. Had I kept a record of my +dream-life, what a variety there would have been! what extravagances, +exceeded by nothing out of the _Arabian Nights' Entertainments_. Then, +if I could have illuminated each day's page with my own fancy portrait +of myself, the _Book of Beauty_ would not have been a circumstance to my +journal. Certainly, among these portraits would not have been that +plain, snub-nosed daguerreotype, sealed and directed to a dear home +friend; but to the dear home friend no picture in the _Book of Beauty_ +or my fancy journal would have had such charms; and if the daguerreotype +would not have illuminated this journal, it was itself illuminated _by +the light of a mother's love_. Alas! this light never more can rest on +and irradiate the plain face of Molly O'Molly. + +After all, what a dull, monotonous life ours would be, if within this +outer life there were not the inner life, the 'wheel within the wheel,' +as in Ezekiel's vision. Though this inner wheel is 'lifted up +whithersoever the spirit' wills 'to go,' the outer--unlike that in the +vision--is not also lifted up; perhaps _hereafter_ it will be. + +The Mohammedans believe that, although unseen by mortals, 'the decreed +events of every man's life are impressed in divine characters on his +forehead.' If so, I shouldn't wonder if there was generally a large +margin of forehead left, unless there is a great deal of repetition.... +The record (not the prophecy) of the inner life, though it is +hieroglyphed on the whole face too, is a scant one; not because there is +but little to record, but because only results are chronicled. Like the +_Veni, vidi, vici_, of Caesar. _Veni_; nothing of the weary march. +_Vidi_; nothing of the doubts, fears, and anxieties. _Vici_; nothing of +the fierce struggle. + +One thing is certain; though we can not read the divine imprint on the +forehead, we know that either there or on the face, either as prophecy +or record, is written, _grief_. Grief, the burden of the sadly-beautiful +song of the poet; yet we find, alas! that _grief is grief_. And the +poet's woe is also the woe of common mortals, though his soul is so +strung that every breeze that sweeps over it is changed to melody. The +wind that wails, and howls, and shrieks around the corners of streets, +among the leafless branches of trees, through desolate houses, is the +same wind that sweeps the silken strings of the AEolian harp. + +Then there is _care_, most often traced on the face of woman, the care +of responsibility or of work, sometimes of both. A man, however hard he +may labor, if he loses a day, does not always find an accumulation of +work; but with poor, over-worked woman, it is, work or be overwhelmed +with work, as in the punishment of prisoners, it is, pump or drown. I +can not understand how women do get along who, with the family of John +Rogers' wife, assisted only by the eldest daughter, a girl of thirteen, +wash, iron, bake, cook, wash dishes, and sew for the family, coats and +pantaloons included, and that too without the help of a machine. Oh! +that pile of sewing always cut out, to be leveled stitch by stitch; for, +unlike water, it never will find its own level, unless its level be Mont +Blanc, for to such a hight it would reach if left to itself. I could +grow eloquent on the subject, but forbear. + +Croakers to the contrary notwithstanding, there is in the record of our +past lives, or in the prophecy of our future, another word than _grief_ +or _care_; it is _joy_. My friend, could your history be truthfully +written, and printed in the old style, are there not many passages that +would shine beautifully in golden letters? I say truthfully written; for +we are so apt to forget our joys, while we remember our griefs. Perhaps +this is because joy and its effects are so evanescent. Leland talks +beautifully of 'the perfumed depths of the lotus-word, _joyousness_;' +but in this world we only breathe the perfume. Could we eat the +lotus!... The fabled lotus-eater wished never to leave the isle whence +he had plucked it. Wrapped in dreamy selfishness, unnerved for the toil +of reaching the far-off shore, he grew indifferent to country and +friends.... So earth would be to us an enchanted isle. The stern toil by +which we are to reach that better land, our _home_, would become irksome +to us. It is well for us that we can only breathe the perfume. + +Then, too, the deepest woe we may know--not the highest joy--that is +bliss beyond even our capacity of dreaming. Some one, in regard to the +ladder Jacob saw in his dream, says: 'But alas! he slept at the foot.' +That any ladder should be substantial enough for cumbersome mortality to +climb to heaven, was too great an impossibility even for a dream. + +But read for yourself the faces that swirl through the streets of a +city. Now and then there is one on which the results of all evil +passions are traced. Were it not for the _brute_ in it, it might be +mistaken for the face of a fiend. Though such are few, too many bear the +impress of at least one evil passion. Every passion, unbitted and +unbridled, hurries the soul bound to it--as Mazeppa was bound to the +wild horse--to certain destruction.... But I--as all things hasten to +the end--will mention one word more--the _finis_ of the prophecy--the +_stamp on the seal_ of the record--_Death_.... We will not dwell on it. +Who more than glances at the _finis_, who studies the plain word stamped +on the seal? + +Yours, MOLLY O'MOLLY. + + +X. + +I have read of a young Indian girl, disguised as her lover, whom she had +assisted to escape from captivity, fleeing from her pursuers, till she +reached the brink of a deep ravine; before her is a perpendicular wall +of rock; behind, the foe, so near that she can hear the crackling of the +dry branches under their tread; yet nearer they come; she almost feels +their breath on her cheek; it is useless to turn at bay; there is hardly +time to measure with her eye the depth of the ravine, or its width. A +step back, another forward, an almost superhuman leap, and she has +cleared the awful chasm.... 'Look before you leap,' is one of caution's +maxims. We may stand looking till it is too late to leap. There are +times when we _must_ put our 'fate to the touch, to win or lose it all;' +there are times when doubt, hesitation, caution is certain destruction. +You are crossing a frozen pond, firm by the shore, but as you near the +centre, the ice beneath your feet begins to crack; hesitate, attempt to +retrace your steps, and you are gone. Did you ever cross a rapid stream +on an unhewn foot-log? You looked down at the swift current, stopped, +turned back, and over you went. You would climb a steep mountain-side. +Half-way up, look not from the dizzy hight, but press on, grasping every +tough laurel and bare root; but hasten, the laurel may break, and you +lose your footing. 'If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all;' but once +resolved to climb, leave thy caution at the foot. Before you give battle +to the enemy, be cautious, reckon well your chances of winning or +losing; above all, be sure of the justice of your cause; but once flung +into the fierce fight, then with _'Dieu et mon droit!'_ for your +battle-cry, let not 'discretion' be _any_ 'part of' your 'valor.' + +Then your careful, hesitating people are cautious where there is no need +of caution, they feel their way on the highways and by-ways of life, as +you have seen a person when fording a stream with whose bed he was +unacquainted. I'd rather fall down and pick myself up a dozen times a +day, than thus grope my way along. + +There is Nancy Primrose. I have good reason to remember her. She was, in +my childhood, always held up to me as a pattern. She used to come to +school with such smooth, clean pantalets, while mine were splashed with +mud, drabbled by the wet grass, or all wrinkles from having been rolled +up. She would go around a rod to avoid a mud-puddle, or if she availed +herself of the board laid down for the benefit of pedestrians, she +never, as I was sure to do, stepped on one end, so the other came down +with a splash. The starch never was taken out of her sun-bonnet by the +rain, for if there was 'a cloud as big as a man's hand,' she took an +umbrella. It was well that she never climbed the mountain-side, for she +would have surely fallen. It was well that she never crossed a foot-log, +unless it was hewn and had a railing, for she would have certainly been +ducked. It was well she never went on thin ice, (she didn't venture till +the other girls had tried it,) she would have broken through. Her +caution, I must say, was of the right kind; it always preceded her +undertaking. She had such a 'wholesome fear of consequences,' that she +never played truant, as one whom I could mention did. Indeed, +antecedents and consequents were always associated in her mind. She +never risked any thing for herself or any one else.... Of course, she is +still _Miss_ Nancy, (I am 'Aunt Molly' to all my friends' children,) +though it is said that she might have been Mrs.----. Mr.----, a widower +of some six months' standing, thinking it time to commence his +probation--the engagement preparatory to being received into the full +matrimonial connection--made some advances toward Miss Nancy, she being +the nearest one verging on 'an uncertain age,' (you know widowers +always go the rounds of the old maids.) Though, in a worldly point of +view, he was an eligible match, she, from her fixed habits of caution, +half-hesitated as to whether it was best to receive his attentions--he +got in a hurry (you know widowers are always in a hurry) and married +some one else.... I don't think Miss Nancy would venture to love any man +before marriage--engagements are as liable to be broken as thin ice, and +it isn't best to throw away love. As for her giving it unasked!... How +peacefully her life flows along--or rather, it hardly flows at all, +about as much as a mill-pond--with such a small bit of heaven and earth +reflected in it. Oh! that placidity!--better have some great, heavy, +splashing sorrow thrown into it than that ever calm surface.... As for +me--it was a good thing that I was a girl--rash, never counting the +cost, without caution, it is well that I have to tread the quiet paths +of domestic life. Had I been a boy, thrown out into the rough, dangerous +world, I'd have rushed over the first precipice, breaking my moral, or +physical neck, or both. As it is, had I been like Miss Nancy, I would +have been spared many an agony, and--many an exquisite joy. + +You may be sure that I have well learned all of caution's maxims; they +have, all my life, been dinged into my ears. Now I hate most maxims. +Though generally considered epitomes of wisdom, they should, almost all +of them, be received with a qualification. What is true in one case is +not true in another; what is good for one, is not good for another. You, +as far as you are concerned, in exactly the same manner draw two lines, +one on a plane, the other on a sphere; one line will be straight, the +other curved. So does every truth, even, make a different mark on +different minds. This is one reason that I hate most maxims, they never +accommodate themselves to circumstances or individuals. The maxim that +would make one man a careful economist, would make another a miser. 'One +man's meat is another man's poison;' one man's truth is another man's +falsehood. + +But how many mistaken ideas have been embodied in maxims--fossilized, I +may say! It would have been better to let them die the natural death of +falsehood, and they might have sprung up in new forms of truth--truth +that never dies. What a vitality it has--a vitality that can not be +dried out by time, nor crushed out by violence. You know how in old +mummy-cases have been found grains of wheat, which, being sown, sprang +up, and bore a harvest like that which waved in the breeze on the banks +of the Nile. You know how God's truth--all truth is God's truth--was +shut up in that old mummy-case, the monastery, and how, when found by +one Luther, and sown broadcast, it sprang up, and now there is hardly an +island, or a river's bank, on which it has not fallen and does not bear +abundant fruit. The 'heel of despotism' could not crush out its life; +ages hence it will be said of it: 'It still lives.' + +And still lives, yours, + +MOLLY O'MOLLY. + + + + +'THAT LAST DITCH.' + + +Many reasons have been assigned for the _Chivalry's_ determining to die +in that last ditch. One William Shakspeare puts into the mouth of +Enobarbus, in _Antony and Cleopatra_, the best reason we have yet seen. +'Tis thus: + + 'I will go seek + Some ditch wherein to die: THE FOUL BEST FITS + MY LATTER PART OF LIFE.' + + + + +HOPEFUL TACKETT--HIS MARK. + +BY RICHARD WOLCOTT, 'TENTH ILLINOIS.' + + + 'An' the Star-Spangle' Banger in triump' shall wave + O! the lan dov the free-e-e, an' the ho mov the brave.' + +Thus sang Hopeful Tackett, as he sat on his little bench in the little +shop of Herr Kordwaener, the village shoemaker. Thus he sang, not +artistically, but with much fervor and unction, keeping time with his +hammer, as he hammered away at an immense 'stoga.' And as he sang, the +prophetic words rose upon the air, and were wafted, together with an +odor of new leather and paste-pot, out of the window, and fell upon the +ear of a ragged urchin with an armful of hand-bills. + +'Would you lose a leg for it, Hope?' he asked, bringing to bear upon +Hopeful a pair of crossed eyes, a full complement of white teeth, and a +face promiscuously spotted with its kindred dust. + +'For the Banger?' replied Hopeful; 'guess I would. Both on 'em--an' a +head, too.' + +'Well, here's a chance for you.' And he tossed him a hand-bill. + +Hopeful laid aside his hammer and his work, and picked up the hand-bill; +and while he is reading it, let us briefly describe him. Hopeful is not +a beauty, and he knows it; and though some of the rustic wits call him +'Beaut,' he is well aware that they intend it for irony. His countenance +runs too much to nose--rude, amorphous nose at that--to be classic, and +is withal rugged in general outline and pimply in spots. His hair is +decidedly too dingy a red to be called, even by the utmost stretch of +courtesy, auburn; dry, coarse, and pertinaciously obstinate in its +resistance to the civilizing efforts of comb and brush. But there is a +great deal of big bone and muscle in him, and he may yet work out a +noble destiny. Let us see. + +By the time he had spelled out the hand-bill, and found that +Lieutenant ---- was in town and wished to enlist recruits for +Company ----, ---- Regiment, it was nearly sunset; and he took off his +apron, washed his hands, looked at himself in the piece of looking-glass +that stuck in the window--a defiant look, that said that he was not +afraid of all that nose--took his hat down from its peg behind the door, +and in spite of the bristling resistance of his hair, crowded it down +over his head, and started for his supper. And as he walked he mused +aloud, as was his custom, addressing himself in the second person, +'Hopeful, what do you think of it? They want more soldiers, eh? Guess +them fights at Donelson and Pittsburg Lannen 'bout used up some o' them +ridgiments. By Jing!' (Hopeful had been piously brought up, and his +emphatic exclamations took a mild form.) 'Hopeful, 'xpect you'll have to +go an' stan' in some poor feller's shoes. 'Twon't do for them there +blasted Seceshers to be killin' off our boys, an' no one there to pay +'em back. It's time this here thing was busted! Hopeful, you an't +pretty, an' you an't smart; but you used to be a mighty nasty hand with +a shot-gun. Guess you'll have to try your hand on old Borey's +[Beauregard's] chaps; an' if you ever git a bead on one, he'll enter his +land mighty shortly. What do you say to goin'? You wanted to go last +year, but mother was sick, an' you couldn't; and now mother's gone to +glory, why, show your grit an' go. Think about it, any how.' + +And Hopeful did think about it--thought till late at night of the +insulted flag, of the fierce fights and glorious victories, of the dead +and the dying lying out in the pitiless storm, of the dastardly outrages +of rebel fiends--thought of all this, with his great warm heart +overflowing with love for the dear old 'Banger,' and resolved to go. +The next morning, he notified his 'boss' of his intention to quit his +service for that of Uncle Sam. The old fellow only opened his eyes very +wide, grunted, brought out the stocking, (a striped relic of the +departed Frau Kordwaener,) and from it counted out and paid Hopeful every +cent that was due him. But there was one thing that sat heavily upon +Hopeful's mind. He was in a predicament that all of us are liable to +fall into--he was in love, and with Christina, Herr Kordwaener's +daughter. Christina was a plump maiden, with a round, rosy face, an +extensive latitude of shoulders, and a general plentitude and solidity +of figure. All these she had; but what had captivated Hopeful's eye was +her trim ankle, as it had appeared to him one morning, encased in a warm +white yarn stocking of her own knitting. From this small beginning, his +great heart had taken in the whole of her, and now he was desperately in +love. Two or three times he had essayed to tell her of his proposed +departure; but every time that the words were coming to his lips, +something rushed up into his throat ahead of them, and he couldn't +speak. At last, after walking home from church with her on Sunday +evening, he held out his hand and blurted out: + +'Well, good-by. We're off to-morrow.' + +'Off! Where?' + +'I've enlisted.' + +Christina didn't faint. She didn't take out her delicate and daintily +perfumed _mouchoir_, to hide the tears that were not there. She looked +at him for a moment, while two great _real_ tears rolled down her +cheeks, and then--precipitated all her charms right into his arms. +Hopeful stood it manfully--rather liked it, in fact. But this is a +tableau that we've no right to be looking at; so let us pass by how they +parted--with what tears and embraces, and extravagant protestations of +undying affection, and wild promises of eternal remembrance; there is no +need of telling, for we all know how foolish young people will be under +such circumstances. We older heads know all about such little matters, +and what they amount to. Oh! yes, certainly we do. + +The next morning found Hopeful, with a dozen others, in charge of the +lieutenant, and on their way to join the regiment. Hopeful's first +experience of camp-life was not a singular one. He, like the rest of us, +at first exhibited the most energetic awkwardness in drilling. Like the +rest of us, he had occasional attacks of home-sickness; and as he stood +at his post on picket in the silent night-watches, while the camps lay +quietly sleeping in the moonlight, his thoughts would go back to his +far-away home, and the little shop, and the plentiful charms of the +fair-haired Christina. So he went on, dreaming sweet dreams of home, but +ever active and alert, eager to learn and earnest to do his duty, +silencing all selfish suggestions of his heart with the simple logic of +a pure patriotism. + +'Hopeful,' he would say, 'the Banger's took care o' you all your life, +an' now you're here to take care of it. See that you do it the best you +know how.' + +It would be more thrilling and interesting, and would read better, if we +could take our hero to glory amid the roar of cannon and muskets, +through a storm of shot and shell, over a serried line of glistening +bayonets. But strict truth--a matter of which newspaper correspondents, +and sensational writers, generally seem to have a very misty +conception--forbids it. + +It was only a skirmish--a bush-whacking fight for the possession of a +swamp. A few companies were deployed as skirmishers, to drive out the +rebels. + +'Now, boys,' shouted the captain, 'after'em! Shoot to kill, not to scare +'em!' + +'Ping! ping!' rang the rifles. + +'Z-z-z-z-vit!' sang the bullets. + +On they went, crouching among the bushes, creeping along under the banks +of the brook, cautiously peering from behind trees in search of +'butternuts.' + +Hopeful was in the advance; his hat was lost, and his hair more +defiantly bristling than ever. Firmly grasping his rifle, he pushed on, +carefully watching every tree and bush, A rebel sharp-shooter started to +run from one tree to another, when, quick as thought, Hopeful's rifle +was at his shoulder, a puff of blue smoke rose from its mouth, and the +rebel sprang into the air and fell back--dead. Almost at the same +instant, as Hopeful leaned forward to see the effect of his shot, he +felt a sudden shock, a sharp, burning pain, grasped at a bush, reeled, +and sank to the ground. + +'Are you hurt much, Hope?' asked one of his comrades, kneeling beside +him and staunching the blood that flowed from his wounded leg. + +'Yes, I expect I am; but that red wamus over yonder's redder 'n ever +now. That feller won't need a pension.' + +They carried him back to the hospital, and the old surgeon looked at the +wound, shook his head, and briefly made his prognosis. + +'Bone shattered--vessels injured--bad leg--have to come off. Good +constitution, though; he'll stand it.' + +And he did stand it; always cheerful, never complaining, only, +regretting that he must be discharged--that he was no longer able to +serve his country. + +And now Hopeful is again sitting on his little bench in Mynheer +Kordwaener's little shop, pegging away at the coarse boots, singing the +same glorious prophecy that we first heard him singing. He has had but +two troubles since his return. One is the lingering regret and +restlessness that attends a civil life after an experience of the rough, +independent life in camp. The other trouble was when he first saw +Christina after his return. The loving warmth with which she greeted him +pained him; and when the worthy Herr considerately went out of the room, +leaving them alone, he relapsed into gloomy silence. At length, speaking +rapidly, and with choked utterance, he began: + +'Christie, you know I love you now, as I always have, better 'n all the +world. But I'm a cripple now--no account to nobody--just a dead +weight--an' I don't want you, 'cause o' your promise before I went away, +to tie yourself to a load that'll be a drag on you all your life. That +contract--ah--promises--an't--is--is hereby repealed! There!' And he +leaned his head upon his hands and wept bitter tears, wrung by a great +agony from his loving heart. + +Christie gently laid her hand upon his shoulder, and spoke, slowly and +calmly: 'Hopeful, your soul was not in that leg, was it?' + +It would seem as if Hopeful had always thought that such was the case, +and was just receiving new light upon the subject, he started up so +suddenly. + +'By jing! Christie!' And he grasped her hand, and--but that is another +of those scenes that don't concern us at all. And Christie has promised +next Christmas to take the name, as she already has the heart, of +Tackett. Herr Kordwaener, too, has come to the conclusion that he wants a +partner, and on the day of the wedding a new sign is to be put up over a +new and larger shop, on which 'Co.' will mean Hopeful Tackett. In the +mean time, Hopeful hammers away lustily, merrily whistling, and singing +the praises of the 'Banger.' Occasionally, when he is resting, he will +tenderly embrace his stump of a leg, gently patting and stroking it, and +talking to it as to a pet. If a stranger is in the shop, he will hold it +out admiringly, and ask: + +'Do you know what I call that? I call that _'Hopeful Tackett--his +mark.'_' + +And it is a mark--a mark of distinction--a badge of honor, worn by many +a brave fellow who has gone forth, borne and upheld by a love for the +dear old flag, to fight, to suffer, to die if need be, for it; won in +the fierce contest, amid the clashing strokes of the steel and the wild +whistling of bullets; won by unflinching nerve and unyielding muscle; +worn as a badge of the proudest distinction an American can reach. If +these lines come to one of those that have thus fought and +suffered--though his scars were received in some unnoticed, unpublished +skirmish, though official bulletins spoke not of him, 'though fame +shall never know his story'--let them come as a tribute to him; as a +token that he is not forgotten; that those that have been with him +through the trials and the triumphs of the field, remember him and the +heroic courage that won for him by those honorable scars; and that while +life is left to them they will work and fight in the same cause, +cheerfully making the same sacrifices, seeking no higher reward than to +take him by the hand and call him 'comrade,' and to share with him the +proud consciousness of duty done. Shoulder-straps and stars may bring +renown; but he is no less a real hero who, with rifle and bayonet, +throws himself into the breach, and, uninspired by hope of official +notice, battles manfully for the right. + +Hopeful Tackett, humble yet illustrious, a hero for all time, we salute +you. + + + + +JOHN BULL TO JONATHAN. + + + You grow too fast, my child! Your stalwart limbs, + Herculean in might, now rival mine; + The starry light upon your forehead dims + The lustre of my crown--distasteful sign. + Contract thy wishes, boy! Do not insist + Too much on what's thine own--thou art too new! + Bend and curtail thy stature! As I list, + It is _my_ glorious privilege to do. + Take my advice--I freely give it thee-- + Nay, would enforce it. I am ripe in years-- + Let thy young vigor minister to me! + Restrain thy freedom when it interferes! + No rival must among the nations be + To jeopardize my own supremacy! + + + + +JONATHAN TO JOHN BULL. + + + Thanks for your kind advice, my worthy sire! + Though thrust upon me, and but little prized. + The offices you modestly require, + I reckon, will be scarcely realized. + My service to you! but not quite so far + That I will lop a limb, or force my lips + To gratify your longing. Not a star + Of my escutcheon shall your fogs eclipse! + Let noble deeds evince my parentage. + No rival I; my aim is not so low: + In nature's course, youth soon outstrippeth age, + And is survivor at its overthrow. + Freedom is Heaven's best gift. Thanks! I am free, + Nor will acknowledge your supremacy! + + + + +AMERICAN STUDENT LIFE. + +SOME MEMORIES OF YALE. + + + 'Through many an hour of summer suns, + By many pleasant ways, + Like Hezekiah's, backward runs + The shadow of my days. + I kiss the lips I once have kissed; + The gas-light wavers dimmer; + And softly through a vinous mist, + My college friendships glimmer.' + + --_Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue._ + +It is now I dare not say how many years since the night that chum and I, +emerging from No. 24, South College, descended the well-worn staircase, +and took our last stroll beneath the heavy shadows that darkly hung from +the old elms of our Alma Mater. Commencement, with its dazzling +excitement, its galleries of fair faces to smile and approve, its +gathered wisdom to listen and adjudge, was no longer the goal of our +student-hopes; and the terrible realization that our joyous college-days +were over, now pressed hard upon us as we paced slowly along, listening +to the low night wind among the summer leaves overhead, or looking up at +the darkened windows whence the laugh and song of class-mates had so oft +resounded to vex with mirth the drowsy ear of night--and tutors. I +thought then, as I have often thought since, that our student-life must +be 'the golden prime' compared with which all coming time would be as +silver, brass, or iron. Here youth with its keenness of enjoyment and +generous heartiness; freedom from care, smooth-browed and mirthful; +liberal studies refining and elevating withal; the Numbers, whose ready +sympathy had divided sorrow and multiplied joy, were associated as they +never could be again; and so I doubt not many a one has felt as he stood +at the door of academic life and looked away over its sunny meadows to +the dark woodlands and rugged hillsides of world-life. How throbbed in +old days the wandering student's heart as on the distant hill-top he +turned to take a last look at disappearing Bologna and remembered the +fair curtain-lecturing Novella de Andrea[1]--fair prototype of modern +Mrs. Caudle; how his spirits rose when, like Lucentio, he came to 'fair +Padua, nursery of arts;' or how he mused for the last time wandering +beside the turbid Arno, in + + 'Pisa, renowned for grave citizens,' + +we wot not. Little do we know either of the ancient 'larks' of the +Sorbonne, of Leyden, Utrecht, and Amsterdam; somewhat less, in spite of +gifted imagining, of _The Student of Salamanca_. But Howitt's _Student +Life in Germany_, setting forth in all its noisy, smoking, beer-drinking +conviviality the significance of the Burschenleben, + + 'I am an unmarried scholar and a free man;' + +Bristed's _Five Years in an English University_, congenial in its +setting forth of the Cantab's carnal delights and intellectual +jockeyism; _The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, an Oxford Freshman_, +wherein one 'Cuthbert Bede, B.A.' has by 'numerous illustrations' of +numerous dissipations, given as good an idea as is desirable of the +'rowing men' in that very antediluvian receptacle of elegant +scholarship; are all present evidences of the affectionate interest with +which the graduate reverts to his college days. In like manner _Student +Life in Scotland_ has engaged the late attention of venerable +_Blackwood_, while the pages of _Putnam_, in _Life in a Canadian +College_,[2] and _Fireside Travels_,[3] have given some idea of things +nearer home, some little time ago. But while numerous pamphlets and +essays have been written on our collegiate systems of education, the +general development and present doings of Young America in the +universities remain untouched. + +The academic influences exerted over American students are, it must be +premised, vastly different from those of the old world. Imprimis, our +colleges are just well into being. Reaching back into no dim antiquity, +their rise and progress are traceable from their beginnings--beginnings +not always the greatest. Thus saith the poet doctor of his Alma Mater: + + 'Pray, who was on the Catalogue + When college was begun? + Two nephews of the President, + And _the_ Professor's son, + (They turned a little Indian by, + As brown as any bun;) + Lord! how the Seniors knocked about + That Freshman class of one!' + +From small beginnings and short lives our colleges have gathered neither +that momentum of years heavy with mighty names and weighty memories, nor +of wealth heaping massive piles and drawing within their cloistered +walls the learning of successive centuries which carries the European +universities crashing down the ages, though often heavy laden with the +dead forms of mediaeval preciseness. No established church makes with +them common cause, no favoring and influential aristocracy gives them +the careless security of a complete protection. Their development thus +far has been under very different influences. Founded in the wilderness +by our English ancestors, they were, at first, it is true, in their +course of study and in foolish formula of ceremony an imperfect copy of +trans-Atlantic originals. Starting from this point, their course has +been shaped according to the peculiar genius of our institutions and +people. Republican feeling has dispensed with the monastic dress, the +servile demeanor toward superiors, and the ceremonious forms which had +lost their significance. The peculiar wants of a new country have +required not high scholarship, but more practical learning to meet +pressing physical wants. Again, our numerous religious sects requiring +each a nursery of its own children, and the great extent of our country, +have called, or seemed to call (in spite of continually increasing +facility of intercourse) for some one hundred and twenty colleges within +our borders. Add to this a demand not peculiar but general--the +increased claim of the sciences and of modern languages upon our +regard--and the accompanying fallacy of supposing Latin and Greek +heathenish and useless, and we have a summary view of the influences +bearing upon our literary institutions. Hence both good and evil have +arisen. Our colleges easily conforming in their youthful and supple +energy, have met the demands of the age. They have thrown aside their +monastic gowns and quadrangular caps. They have in good degree given up +the pedantic follies of Latin versification and Hebrew orations. Their +walls have arisen alike in populous city and lonely hamlet, and in +poverty and insignificance they have been content could they give depth +and breadth to any small portion of the national mind. They have +conceded to Science the place which her rapid and brilliant progress +demanded. On the other hand, however, we see long and well-proven +systems of education profaned by the ignorant hands of superficial +reformers. We see the colleges themselves dragging on a precarious life, +yet less revered than cherished by fostering sects, and more hooted at +by the advocates of potato-digging and other practical pursuits, than +defended by their legitimate protectors. It is not to be denied that +there is a powerful element of Materialism among us, and that too often +we neither appreciate nor respect the earnest, abstruse scholar. The +progress of humanity must be shouted in popular catch-words from the +house-tops, and the noisy herald appropriates the laudation of him who +in pain and weariness traced the hidden truth. We hear men of enlarged +thought and lofty views derided as old fogies because beyond unassisted +appreciation, until we are half-tempted to believe the generation to be +multiplied Ephraims given to their idols, who had best be let alone. + +The American student, under these influences, differs somewhat from his +European brethren. He is younger by two or three years. Though generally +from the better class, he is more, perhaps, identified with the mass of +the people, and is more of a politician than a scholar. His remarks upon +the Homeric dialects, however laudatory, are most suspiciously vague, +and though he escape such slight errors as describing the Gracchi as a +barbarous tribe in the north of Italy or the Piraeus as a meat-market of +Athens, you must beware of his classical allusions. On the other hand he +is more moral, a more independent thinker and a freer man than his +prototype across the sea. His fault is, as Bristed says, that he is +superficial; his virtue, that he is straightforward and earnest in +aiming at practical life. + +Such may suffice for a few general remarks. But some memories of one of +our most important universities will better set forth the habits and +customs of the joyous student-life than farther wearisome generality. + +The pleasant days are gone that I dreamed away beneath the green arcades +of the fair Elm City. But still come the budding spring and the blooming +summer to embower those quiet streets and to fill the morning hour with +birds' sweet singing. Still comes the gorgeous autumn--the dead summer +lain in state--and the cloud-robed winter to round the circling year. +Still streams the golden sunlight through the green canopies of tented +elms, and still, I ween, do pretty school-girls (feminine of student) +loiter away in flirting fascination the holiday afternoons beneath their +shade. Still do our memories haunt those old walks we loved so well: the +avenue shaded and silent like grove of Academe, fit residence of +colloquial man of science or genial metaphysician; the old cemetery with +its brown ivy-grown wall, its dark, massive evergreens, and moss-grown +stones, that, before years had effaced the inscription, told the mortal +story of early settler; elm-arched Temple street, where the midnight +moon shone so softly through the dark masses of foliage and slept so +sweetly on the sloping green. Still do those old wharves and +warehouses--ancient haunts of colonial commerce and scenes of +continental struggle--rest there in dusty quiet, hearing but murmurs of +the noisy merchant-world without; and the fair bay lies silent among +those green hills that slope southward to the Sound. Methinks I hear the +ripple of its moonlit waves as in the summer night it upbore our gallant +boat and its fair freight; the far-off music stealing o'er the bright +waters; the distant rattling of some paid-out cable as a newly arrived +bark anchors down the bay; or the lonely baying of a watch-dog at some +farm-house on the hight. I see the sail-boats bending under their canvas +and dashing the salt spray from their bows as they rush through the +smooth water, and the oyster-boats cleaving the clear brine like an +arrow, bound for Fair Haven, of many shell-fish; while sturdy sloops and +schooners--suggestive of lobsters or pineapples--bow their big heads +meekly and sway themselves at rest. I see again those long lines of +green-wooded slope, here crowned by a lonely farm-house musing solitary +on the hills as it looks off on the blue Sound, there ending abruptly in +a weather-worn cliff of splintered trap, or anon bringing down some +arable acres to the very beach, where a gray old cottage, kept in +countenance by two or three rugged poplars, like the fisher's hut, + + 'In der blauen Fluth sich beschaut.' + +Nor can I soon forget those wild hillsides, so glorious both when the +summer floods of foliage came pouring down their sides, and when autumn, +favorite child of the year, donned his coat of many colors and came +forth to join his brethren. Then, on holiday-afternoon, free from +student-care, we climbed the East or West Rock, and looked abroad over +the distant city-spires, rock-ribbed hillside and sail-dotted sea; or +threading the devious path to the Judges' Cave, where tradition said +that in colonial times the regicides, Goffe and Whalley, lay hidden, +read on the lone rock that in the winter wilderness overhung their bleak +hiding-place, in an old inscription carved not without pain, in quaint +letters of other years, the stern and stirring old watchword: + + +'RESISTANCE TO TYRANTS IS OBEDIENCE TO GOD.' + + +Or, going further, we climbed Mount Carmel, and looked from its steep +cliff down into the solitary rock-strewn valley-- + + 'Where storm and lightning from that huge gray wall, + Had tumbled down vast blocks, and at the base + Dashed them in fragments.' + +Or went on to the Cheshire hillside, where the Roaring Brook, tumbling +down the steep ravine, flashed its clear waters into whitest foam, and +veiled the unsightly rocks with its snowy spray; or, perchance, in +cumbrous boat, floated upon Lake Saltonstall, hermit of ponds, set like +a liquid crystal in the emerald hills--an eyesore to luckless piscatory +students, but highly favored of all lovers of ice, whether applied to +the bottoms of ringing High Dutchers, or internally in shape of summer +refrigerators. + +In the midst of these pleasant haunts and this fair city, lies a sloping +green of twenty or twenty-five acres, girt and bisected by rows of huge +elms, and planted with three churches, whose spires glisten above the +tall trees, and with a stuccoed State House, whose peeled columns and +crumbling steps are more beautiful in conception than execution. On the +upper side, looking down across, stretched out in a long line of eight +hundred feet, the buildings of the college stand, in dense shade. Ugly +barracks, four stories high, built of red brick, without a line of +beautifying architecture, they yet have an ancient air of repose, buried +there in the deep shade, that pleases even the fastidious eye. In the +rear, an old laboratory, diverted from its original gastronomic purpose +of hall, which in our American colleges has dispensed with commons, a +cabinet, similarly metamorphosed, and containing some magnificent +specimens of the New World's minerals; a gallery of portraits of +college, colonial and revolutionary worthies--a collection of rare +historical interest; a Gothic pile of library, built of brown sandstone, +its slender towers crowned with grinning, uncouth heads, cut in stone, +which are pointed out to incipient Freshmen as busts of members of the +college faculty; and a castellated Gothic structure of like material, +occupied by the two ancient literary fraternities, and notable toward +the close of the academic year as the place where isolated Sophomores +and Seniors write down the results of two years' study in the Biennial +Examination--make up the incongruous whole of the college proper. + +Such is the place where, about the middle of September, if you have been +sojourning through the very quiet vacation in one of the almost deserted +hotels of New-Haven, you will begin to be conscious of an awakening from +the six weeks' torpor, (the _long_ vacation of hurried Americans who +must study forty weeks of the year.) Along the extended row of brick you +will begin to discern aproned 'sweeps' clearing the month and a half's +accumulated rubbish from the walks, beating carpets on the grass-plots, +re-lining with new fire-brick the sheet-iron cylinder-stoves, more +famous for their eminent Professor improver (may his shadow never be +less!) than for their heating qualities, or furbishing old furniture +purchased at incredibly low prices, of the last class, to make good as +new for the Freshmen, periphrastically known as 'the young gentlemen who +have lately entered college.' It may be, too, that your practiced eye +will detect one of these fearful youths, who, coming from a thousand +miles in the interior--from the prairies of the West or the bayous of +the South--has arrived before his time, and now, blushing unseen, is +reconnoitering the intellectual fortress which he hopes soon to storm +with 'small Latin and less Greek,' or, perchance, remembering with sad +face the distance of his old home and the strangeness of the new. A few +days more, and hackmen drive down Chapel street hopefully, and return +with trunks and carpet-bags outside and diversified specimens of +student-humanity within--a Freshman, in spite of his efforts, showing +that his as yet undeveloped character is '_summa integritate et +innocentia_;' a Sophomore, somewhat flashy and bad-hatted, a _hard_ +student in the worse sense, with much of the '_fortiter in re_' in his +bearing; a Junior, exhibiting the antithetical '_suaviter in modo_;' a +Senior, whose '_otium cum dignitate_' at once distinguishes him from the +vulgar herd of common mortals. Then succeed hearty greetings of meeting +friends, great purchase of text-books, and much changing of rooms; +students being migratory by nature, and stimulated thereto by the +prospect of choice of better rooms conceded to advanced academical +standing. In which state of things the various employes of college, +including the trusty colored Aquarius, facetiously denominated Professor +_Paley_, under the excitement of numerous quarters, greatly multiply +their efforts. + +But the chief interest of the opening year is clustered around the class +about to unite its destinies with the college-world. A new century of +students-- + + 'The igneous men of Georgia, + The ligneous men of Maine,' + +the rough, energetic Westerner, the refined, lethargic metropolitan, +with here and there a missionary's son from the Golden Horn or the isles +of the Pacific or even a Chinese, long-queued and meta-physical, are to +be divided between the two rival literary Societies.[4] These having +during the last term with great excitement elected their officers for +the coming 'campaign,' and held numerous 'indignation meetings,' where +hostile speeches and inquiries into the numbers to be sent down by the +various academies were diligently prosecuted to the great neglect of +debates and essays, now join issue with an adroitness on the part of +their respective members which gives great promise for political life. +Committees at the station-house await the arrival of every train, accost +every individual of right age and verdancy; and, having ascertained that +he is not a city clerk nor a graduate, relapsed into his ante-academic +state, offer their services as amateur porters, guides, or tutors, +according to the wants of the individual. Having thus ingratiated +themselves, various are the ways of procedure. Should the new-comer +prove confiding, perhaps he is told that 'there is _one_ vacancy left in +our Society, and if you wish, I will try and get it for you,' which, +after a short absence, presumed to be occupied with strenuous effort, +the amiable advocate succeeds in doing, to the great gratitude of his +Freshman friend. But should he prove less tractable, and wish to hear +both sides, then some comrade is perhaps introduced as belonging to the +other Society, and is sorely worsted in a discussion of the respective +excellencies of the two rival fraternities. Or if he be religious, the +same disguised comrade shall visit him on the Sabbath, and with much +profanity urge the claims of his supposititious Society. By such, and +more honorable means, the destiny of each is soon fixed, and only a few +stragglers await undecided the so-called 'Statement of Facts,' when with +infinite laughter and great hustling of 'force committees,' they are +preaedmitted to 'Brewster's Hall' to hear the three appointed orators of +each Society laud themselves and deny all virtue to their opponents; +which done, in chaotic state of mind they fall an easy prey to the +strongest, and with the rest are initiated that very evening with lusty +cheers and noisy songs and speeches protracted far into the night. + +Nor less notable are the Secret Societies, two or three of which exist +in every class, and are handed down yearly to the care of successors. +With more quiet, but with busy effort, their members are carefully +chosen and pledged, and with phosphorous, coffins, and dead men's bones, +are awfully admitted to the mysteries of Greek initials, private +literature, and secret conviviality. Being picked men, and united, they +each form an _imperium in imperio_ in the large societies much used by +ambitious collegians. Curious as it may seem, too, many of these +societies have gained some influence and notoriety beyond college walls. +The Psi Upsilon, Alpha Delta Phi, and Delta Kappa Epsilon Societies, are +now each ramified through a dozen or more colleges, having annual +conventions, attended by numerous delegates from the several chapters, +and by graduate members of high standing in every department of letters. +Yet they have no deep significance like that of the Burschenschaft. + +Close treading on the heels of Society movements, comes the annual +foot-ball game between the Freshmen and Sophomores. The former having +_ad mores majorum_ given the challenge and received its acceptance, on +some sunny autumn afternoon you may see the rival classes of perhaps a +hundred men each, drawn up on the Green in battle and motley array, the +latter consisting of shirt and pants, unsalable even to the sons of +Israel, and huge boots, perhaps stuffed with paper to prevent hapless +abrasion of shins. The steps of the State House are crowded with the +'upper classes,' and ladies are numerous in the balconies of the +New-Haven Hotel. The umpires come forward, and the ground is cleared of +intruders. There is a dead silence as an active Freshman, retiring to +gain an impetus, rushes on; a general rush as the ball is _warned_; then +a seizure of the disputed bladder, and futile endeavors to give it +another impetus, ending in stout grappling and the endeavor to force it +through. Now there is fierce issue; neither party gives an inch. Now +there is a side movement and roll of the struggling orb as to relieve +the pressure. Now one party gives a little, then closes desperately in +again on the encouraged enemy. Now a dozen are down in a heap, and there +is momentary cessation, then up and pressing on again. Here a fiery +spirit grows pugnacious, but is restrained by his class-mates; there +another has his shirt torn off him, and presents the picturesque +appearance of an amateur scarecrow. There are, in short, both + + 'Breaches of peace and pieces of breeches,' + +until the stronger party carries the ball over the bounds, or it gets +without the crowd unobserved by most, and goes off hurriedly under the +direction of some swift-footed player to the same goal. Then mighty is +the cheering of the victors, and woe-begone the looks, though defiant +the groans of the vanquished. And thus, with much noise and dispute, and +great confounding of umpire, they continue for three, four, or five +games, or until the evening chapel-bell calls to prayers. In the evening +the victors sing paeans of victory by torch-light on the State House +steps, and bouquets, supposed to be sent by the fair ones of the +balconies, are presented and received with great glorification. + +Nor less exciting and interesting in college annals, is the Burial of +Euclid. The incipient Sophomores, assisted by the other classes, must +perform duly the funeral rites of their friend of Freshman-days, by +nocturnal services at the 'Temple.' Wherefore, toward midnight of some +dark Wednesday evening in October, you may see masked and +fantastically-dressed students by twos and threes stealing through the +darkness to the common rendezvous. An Indian chief of gray leggins and +grave demeanor goes down arm in arm with the prince of darkness, and a +portly squire of the old English school communes sociably with a +patriotic continental. Here is a reinforcement of 'Labs,' (students of +chemistry,) noisy with numerous fish-horns; there a detachment of +'Medics,' appropriately armed with thigh-bones, according to their +several resources. Then, when gathered within the hall, a crowded mass +of ugly masks, shocking bad hats, and antique attire, look down from +the steep slope of seats upon the stage where lies the effigy of Father +Euclid, in inflammable state. After a voluntary by the 'Blow Hards,' +'Horne Blenders,' or whatever facetiously denominated band performs the +music, there is a mighty singing of some Latin song, written with more +reference to the occasion than to correct quantities, of which the +following opening stanza may serve as a specimen: + + 'Fundite nunc lacrymas, + Plorate Yalenses: + Euclid rapuerunt fata, + Membra et ejus inhumata + Linquimus tres menses.' + +The wild, grotesque hilarity of those midnight songs can never be +forgotten. Then come poem and funeral oration, interspersed with songs, +and music by the band--'Old Grimes is dead,' 'Music from the Spheres,' +and other equally solemn and rare productions. Then are torches lighted, +and two by two the long train of torch-bearers defiles through the +silent midnight streets to the sound of solemn music, and passing by the +dark cemetery of the real dead, bear through 'Tutor's Lane' the coffin +of their mathematical ancestor. They climb the hill beyond, and commit +him to the flames, invoking Pluto, in Latin prayer, and chanting a final +dirge, while the flare of torches, the fearful grotesqueness of each +uncouth disguised wight, and the dark background of the encircling +forest, make the wild mirth almost solemn. + +So ends the fun of the closing year; and with the exception of the +various excitements of burlesque debate on Thanksgiving eve, when the +smallest Freshman in either Society is elected President _pro tempore;_ +of the _noctes ambrosianae_ of the secret societies; of appointments, +prize essays, and the periodical issue of the _Yale Literary_, now a +venerable periodical of twenty years' standing; the severe drill of +college study finds little relaxation during the winter months. Three +recitations or lectures each day, a review each day of the last lesson, +review of and examination on each term's study, with two biennial +examinations during the four years' course, require great diligence to +excel, and considerable industry to keep above water. But with the +returning spring the unused walks again are paced, and the dry keels +launched into the vernal waters. Again, in the warm twilight of evening, +you hear the laugh and song go up under the wide-spreading elms. Now, +too, comes the Exhibition of the Wooden Spoon, where the low-appointment +men burlesque the staid performances of college, and present the lowest +scholar on the appointment-list with an immense spoon, handsomely carved +from rosewood, and engraved with the convivial motto: '_Dum vivimus +vivamus_.' + +Then, too, come those summer days upon the harbor, when the fleet +club-boats, and their stalwart crews, like those of Alcinous, + + [Greek: 'kouroi anarriptein ala pedo,'] + +in their showy uniforms, push out from Ryker's; some bound upward past +the oyster-beds of Fair Haven, away up among the salt-marsh meadows, +where the Quinnipiac wanders under quaint old bridges among fair, green +hills; some for the Light, shooting out into the broad waters of the +open bay, their feathered oars flashing in the sunlight; some for +Savin's Rock, where among the cool cedars that overshadow the steep +rock, they sing uproarious student-songs until the dreamy beauty of +ocean, with its laughing sunlight, its white sails, and green, quiet +shores, like visible music, shall steal in and fill the soul until the +noisy hilarity becomes eloquent silence. And now, as in the +twilight-hour they are again afloat, you may hear the song again: + + 'Many the mile we row, boys, + Merry, merry the song; + The joys of long ago, boys, + Shall be remembered long. + Then as we rest upon the oar, + We raise the cheerful strain, + Which we have often sung before, + And gladly sing again.' + +But perhaps the most interesting day of college-life is +'Presentation-Day,' when the Seniors, having passed the various ordeals +of _viva voce_ and written examinations, are presented by the senior +tutor to the President, as worthy of their degrees. This ceremony is +succeeded by a farewell poem and oration by two of the class chosen for +the purpose, after which they partake of a collation with the college +faculty, and then gather under the elms in front of the colleges. They +seat themselves on a ring of benches, inside of which are placed huge +tubs of lemonade, (the strongest drink provided for public occasions,) +long clay pipes, and great store of mildest Turkey tobacco. Here, led on +by an amateur band of fiddlers, flutists, etc., through the long +afternoon of 'the leafy month of June,' surrounded by the other classes +who crowd about in cordial sympathy, they smoke manfully, harangue +enthusiastically, laugh uproariously, and sing lustily, beginning always +with the glorious old Burschen song of 'Gaudeamus': + + 'Gaudeamus igitur + Juvenes dum sumus: + Post jucundam juventutem, + Post molestam senectutem, + Nos habebit humus.' + + * * * * * + + 'Pereat tristitia, + Pereant osores, + Pereat diabolus, + Quivis antiburschius + Atque irrisores.' + +Then as the shadows grow long, perhaps they sing again those stirring +words which one returning to the third semi-centennial of his Alma +Mater, wrote with all the warmth and power of manly affection: + + * * * * * + + 'Count not the tears of the long-gone years, + With their moments of pain and sorrow; + But laugh in the light of their memories bright, + And treasure them all for the morrow. + Then roll the song in waves along, + While the hours are bright before us, + And grand and hale are the towers of Yale, + Like guardians towering o'er us. + + * * * * * + + 'Clasp ye the hand 'neath the arches grand + That with garlands span our greeting. + With a silent prayer that an hour as fair + May smile on each after meeting: + And long may the song, the joyous song, + Roll on in the hours before us, + And grand and hale may the elms of Yale + For many a year bend o'er us.' + +Then standing in closer circle, they pass around to give, each to each, +a farewell grasp of the hand; and amid that extravagant merriment the +lips begin to quiver, and eyes grow dim. Then, two by two, preceded by +the miscellaneous band, playing 'The Road to Boston,' and headed by a +huge base-viol, borne by two stout fellows, and played by a third, they +pass through each hall of the long line of buildings, giving farewell +cheers, and at the foot of one of the tall towers, each throws his +handful of earth on the roots of an ivy, which, clinging about those +brown masses of stone, in days to come, he trusts will be typical of +their mutual, remembrance as he breathes the silent prayer: 'Lord, keep +our memories green!' + +So end the college-days of these most uproarious of mirth-makers and +hardest of American students; and the hundred whose joys and sorrows +have been identified through four happy years, are dispersed over the +land. They are partially gathered again at Commencement, but the broken +band is never completely united. On the third anniversary of their +graduation, the first class-meeting takes place; and the first happy +father is presented with a silver cup, suitably inscribed. On the tenth, +twentieth, and other decennial years, the gradually diminishing band, in +smaller and smaller numbers, meet about the beloved shrine, until only +two or three gray-haired men clasp the once stout hand and renew the +remembrance of 'the days that are gone.' + + 'They come ere life departs, + Ere winged death appears. + To throng their joyous hearts + With dreams of sunnier years: + To meet once more + Where pleasures sprang, + And arches rang + With songs of yore.' + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: 'In the fourteenth century, Novella de Andrea, daughter of +the celebrated canonist, frequently occupied her father's chair; and her +beauty was so striking, that a curtain was drawn before her in order not +to distract the attention of the students.'] + +[Footnote 2: Vol. i. p. 392.] + +[Footnote 3: Vol. iii. pp. 379 and 473.] + +[Footnote 4: The Linonian Society was founded in 1753; The Brothers in +Unity, fifteen years later, in 1768.] + + + + +GO IN AND WIN. + + + Will nothing rouse the Northmen + To see what they can do? + When in one day of our war-growth + The South are growing two? + When they win a victory it always counts a pair, + One at home in Dixie, and another _over there_! + + North, you have spent your millions! + North, you have sent your men! + But if the war ask billions, + You must give it all again. + Don't stop to think of what you've done--it's very fine and true-- + But in fighting for our _life_, the thing is, _what we've yet to do_. + + Who dares to talk of party, + And the coming President, + When the rebels threaten 'bolder raids,' + And all the land is rent? + How _dare_ we learn 'they gather strength,' by every telegraph, + If an army of a million could have scattered them like chaff! + + What means it when the people + Are prompt with blood and gold, + That this devil-born rebellion + Is growing two years old? + The Nigger feeds them as of old, and keeps away their fears, + While 'gayly into battle' go the 'Southern cavaliers.' + + And the Richmond _Whig_, which lately + Lay groveling in mud, + Shows its mulatto insolence, + And prates of 'better blood:' + 'We ruled them in the Union; we can thrash them out of bounds: + Ye are mad, ye drunken Helots--cap off, ye Yankee hounds!' + + Yet the Northman has the power, + And the North would not be still! + Rise up! rise up, ye rulers! + Send the people where ye will! + Don't organize your victories--fly to battle with your bands-- + If you can find the brains to lead, _we'll find the willing hands!_ + + + + +JOHN NEAL. + + +John Neal was born at the close of the last century, in Portland, Maine, +where he now resides; and during sixty years it has not been decided +whether he or his twin sister was the elder. + +He was born in 1793. When he was four weeks old, he was fatherless. His +school education began early, as his mother was a celebrated teacher. +From his mother's school he went to the town school, where he once +declared in our hearing that he 'got licked, frozen, and stupefied.' +That he had a rough time, may be inferred from the fact that his parents +were Quakers, and he, notwithstanding his peaceful birthright, _fought_ +his way through the school as 'Quaker Neal.' He went barefoot in those +days through a great deal of trouble. Somewhere in his early life, he +went to a Quaker boarding-school at Windham, where he always averred +that they starved him through two winters, till it was a luxury to get a +mouthful of brown bread that was not a crumb or fragment that some one +had left. At this school the boys learned to sympathize in advance with +Oliver Twist--to eat trash, till they would quarrel for a bit of salt +fish-skin, and to generalize in their hate of Friends from very narrow +data. We have heard Neal speak of the two winters he spent in that +school as by far the most miserable six or eight months of his whole +life. + +Very early, we think at the age of twelve years, he was imprisoned +behind a counter, and continued there till he was near twenty; and by +the time he was twenty one, he had worked his way to a retail shop of +his own in Court street, Boston. We next track him to Baltimore, where, +in 1815, if we are not out in our chronology, John Pierpont, John Neal, +and Joseph L. Lord were in partnership in a wholesale trade. Neal's +somersets in business--from partnership to wholesale jobbing, which he +went into on his own hook with a capital of _one hundred and fifty +dollars_, and as he once said, in speaking of this remarkable business +operation, 'with about as much credit as a lamp-lighter'--may not be any +more interesting to the public than they were to him then; so we shall +not be particular about them in this chapter of chronicles. + +At Baltimore he was very successful, after he got at it, in making +money, but failed after the peace in 1816. This failure made him a +lawyer. With his characteristic impetuosity, he renounced and denounced +trade, determined to study law, and beat the profession with its own +weapons. + +This impulse drove him at rather more than railroad speed. He studied as +if a demon chased him. By computation of then Justice Story, he +accomplished fourteen years' hard work in four. During this time he was +reading largely in half-a-dozen languages that he knew nothing of when +he began, _and maintaining himself_ by writing, either as editor of _The +Telegraph_, coeditor of _The Portico_, (for which he wrote near a volume +octavo in a year or two,) and also as joint-editor of Paul Allen's +_Revolution_, besides a tremendous avalanche of novels and poetry. We +have amused ourself casting up the amount of this four years' labor. It +seems entirely too large for the calibre of common belief, and we +suppose Neal will hardly believe us, especially if he have grown +luxurious and lazy in these latter days. Crowded into these four years, +we find: for the _Portico_ and _Telegraph_, and half-a-dozen other +papers, ten volumes; 'Keep Cool,' two volumes; 'Seventy-Six,' two +volumes; 'Errata,' two volumes; 'Niagara and Goldau,' two volumes; Index +to Niles' Register, three volumes; 'Otho,' one volume; 'Logan,' four +volumes; 'Randolph,' two volumes; Buckingham's Galaxy, Miscellanies, and +Poetry, two volumes; making the incredible quantity of thirty volumes. +He could no more have gone leisurely and carefully through this amount +of work, than a skater could walk a mile a minute on his skates. The +marvel is, that he got through it on any terms, not that he won his own +disrespect forever. We do not wonder that he manufactured more bayonets +than bee-stings for his literary armory, but we wonder that he became a +literary champion at all. With all the irons Neal had in the fire, we +are not to expect Addisonian paragraphs; and yet he has in his lifetime +been mistaken for Washington Irving, as we can show by an extract from +an old letter of his, which we will give by and by. + +A power that could produce what Neal produced between 1819 and 1823, +properly disciplined and economized, might have performed tasks +analogous to those of the lightning, since it has been put in harness +and employed to carry the mail. When genius has its day of humiliation +for the wasted water of life, Neal may put on sackcloth, for he never +economized his power; but for the soul's fire quenched in idleness, or +smothered in worldliness, certainly for these years, he need wear no +weeds. + +His novels are always like a rushing torrent, never like a calm stream. +They all are dignified with a purpose, with a determination to correct +some error, to remedy some abuse, to do good in any number of instances. +They are not unlike a field of teasels in blossom--there are the thorny +points of this strange plant, and the delicate and exceedingly beautiful +blossom beside, resting on the very points of a hundred lances, with +their lovely lilac bloom. Those who have lived where teasels grow will +understand this illustration. We doubt not it will seem very pointed and +proper to Neal. It must be remembered that the teasel is a very useful +article in dressing cloth, immense cards of them being set in machinery +and made to pass over the cloth and raise and clean the nap. A criticism +taking in all the good and bad points of these novels, would be too +extensive to pass the door of any review or magazine, unless in an +extra. They are full of the faults and virtues of their author's +unformed character. Rich as a California mine, we only wish they could +be passed through a gold-washer, and the genuine yield be thrown again +into our literary currency. + +The character of his poems is indicated by their titles, 'Niagara' and +'Goldau,' and by the _nom de plume_ he thought proper to publish them +under, namely, 'Jehu O. Cataract.' But portions of his poetry repudiate +this thunderous parentage, and are soft as the whispering zephyr or the +cooing of doves. The gentleness of strength has a double beauty: its +own, and that of contrast. Still, the predominating character of Neal's +poetry is the sweep of the wild eagle's wing and the roar of rushing +waters. + +We read his 'Otho' years since, when we were younger than now, and our +pulse beat stronger; and we read it 'holding our breath to the end'--or +this was the exact sensation we felt, as nearly as we can remember, +twelve years ago. + +The character of Neal's periodical writing was just suited to a working +country, that was in too great a hurry to dine decently. People wanted +to be arrested. If they could stop, they had brains enough to judge you +and your wares; but they needed to be lassoed first, and lashed into +quietness afterward, and then they would hear and revere the man who had +been 'smart' enough to conquer them. John Neal seemed to be conscious of +this without knowing it. A veritable woman in his intuitions, he spoke +from them, and the heart of the people responded. The term 'live Yankee' +was of his coinage, and it aptly christened himself. + +Neal went to Europe in 1823, and remained three years. That an American +could manage to maintain himself in England by writing, which Neal did, +is a pregnant fact. But his power is better proved than in this way. He +left America with a vow of temperance during his travels; he returned +with it unbroken. Honor to the strong man! He had traveled through +England and France, merely wetting his lips with wine. He wrote volumes +for British periodicals, and also his 'Brother Jonathan' in three +volumes. After looking over the catalogue of his labors for an hour, we +always want to draw a long breath and rest. There is no doubt that since +his return from Europe in 1826, he has written and published, in books +and newspapers, what would make at least one hundred volumes duodecimo. +It would be a hard fate for such an author to be condemned to read his +own productions, for he would never get time to read any thing else. + +Neal's peculiar style caused many oddities and extravagances to be laid +at his door that did not belong there. From this fact of style, people +thought he could not disguise himself on paper. This is a mistake, for +his papers in Miller's _European Magazine_ were attributed to Washington +Irving. We transcribe the paragraph of a letter from Neal, promised +above, and which we received years since: + + 'The papers I wrote for Miller's _European Magazine_ have been + generally attributed to no less a person than Washington Irving--a + man whom I resemble just about as much in my person as in my + writing. He, Addisonian and Goldsmithian to the back-bone, and + steeped to the very lips in what is called classical literature, of + which I have a horror and a loathing, as the deadest of all dead + languages; he, foil of subdued pleasantry, quiet humor, and genial + blandness, upon all subjects. I, altogether--but never mind. He is + a generous fellow, and led the way to all our triumphs in that + 'field of the cloth of gold' which men call the _literary_'. + +Neal went to England a sort of Yankee knight-errant to fight for his +country. He had the wisdom to fight with his visor down, and quarter on +the enemy. He took heavy tribute from _Blackwood_ and others for his +articles vindicating America, which came to be extravagantly quoted and +read. His article for _Blackwood_ on the Five Presidents and the Five +Candidates, portraying General Jackson to the life as he afterward +proved to be, was translated into most of the European languages. I +transcribe another paragraph from an old letter. It is too +characteristic to remain unread by the public: + + 'For my paper on the Presidents, _Blackwood_ sent me five guineas, + and engaged me as a regular contributor, which I determined to be. + But I ventured to write for other journals without consulting him; + whereat he grew tetchy and impertinent, and I blew him up sky-high, + recalled an article in type for which he had paid me _fifteen_ + guineas, (I wish he had kept it,) refunded the money, (I wish I + hadn't,) and left him forever. But this I will say: _Blackwood_ + behaved handsomely to me from first to last, with one small + exception, and showed more courage and good feeling toward '_my + beloved_ country' while I was at the helm of that department, than + any and all the editors, publishers, and proprietors in Britain. + Give the devil his due, I say!' + +This escapade with _Blackwood_ might have been a national loss; but +happily, Neal had accomplished his purpose--vindicated his country by +telling the truth, and by showing in himself the metal of one of her +sons. He had silenced the whole British battery of periodicals who had +been abusing America. He had forced literary England to a capitulation, +and he could well enough afford to leave his fifteen guineas at +_Blackwood's_, and go to France for recreation, as he did about this +time. + +In 1826 he returned to America, and applied for admission to the +New-York bar. This started a hornet's nest. He had been 'sarving up' too +many newspaper and other scribblers, to be left in peace any longer. +With an excellent opinion of himself, his contempt was often quite as +large, to say the least of it, as his charity; and he had doubtless, at +times, in England, ridiculed his countrymen to the full of their +deserving; knowing that if he admitted the debtor side honestly, he +would be allowed to fix the amount of credit without controversy. His +Yankees are alarming specimens, which a growing civilization has so +nearly 'used up' that they are now regarded somewhat like fossil remains +of some extinct species of animal. + +About the time Neal applied for admission to the New-York bar, a portion +of the people of Portland, stimulated by the aggrieved _literati_ above +mentioned, determined to elevate themselves into a mob _pro tem._, and +expel him from Portland. In the true spirit of his Quaker ancestry, who, +some one has said, always decided they were needed where they were not +wanted, Neal determined to stay in Portland, The mobocrats declared that +he was sold to the British. Neal retorted, in cool irony, that 'he only +wished he had got an offer.' They asserted that he was the mortal enemy +of our peculiar institutions, and that therefore he must be placarded +and mobbed. Hand-bills were issued, and widely circulated. But they did +not effect their object. They only drove this son of the Quakers to +_swear_ that he would stay in Portland. And he did stay, and established +a literary paper, though he once said to us that 'he would as soon have +thought of setting up a _Daily Advertiser_ in the Isle of Shoals three +months before.' + +His marriage took place about this time, and was, as he used to say, his +pledge for good behavior. His wife was one of the loveliest of +New-England's daughters, and looked as if she might tame a tiger by the +simple magic of her presence. It is several years since we have met +Neal, and near a dozen since we saw him in his home. At that time he +must have been greatly in fault not to be a proud and happy man. If a +calm, restful exterior, and a fresh and youthful beauty, are signs of +happiness, then Mrs. Neal was one of the happiest women in the world. +The delicate softness, the perfection of youth in her beauty, lives +still in our memory. It is one of those real charms that never drop +through the mind's meshes. + +Judging from Neal's impulsive nature, he was not the last man to do +something to be sorry for; but his wife and children looked as if they +were never sorry. We remember a little girl of some five or six years; +we believe they called her Maggie. Her dimpled cheek, her white round +neck and arms, and the perfect symmetry of her form, and the grace of +her motions, have haunted us these twelve years. We would not promise to +remember her as long or as well if we should see her again in these +days. But we made up our mind then, that we would rather be the father +of that child than the author of all Neal had written, or might have +written, even though he had been a wise and prudent man, and had done +his work as well as he doubtless wishes now that he had done it. Neal is +only half himself away from his beautiful home. There, he is in +place--an eagle in a nest lined with down, soft as eider. There his fine +taste is manifest in every thing. If we judge of his taste by his +rapidly-written works, we are sure to do him injustice. We find in him a +union of the most opposite qualities. We can not say a harmonious union. +An inflexible industry is not often united with a bird-like celerity and +grace of movement. With Neal, the two first have always been +combined--the whole on occasions, which might have been multiplied into +unbroken continuity if he had possessed the calm greatness that never +hastens and never rests. He did not rest; but through the first half of +his life, he surely forgot the Scripture which saith: 'He that believeth +shall not make haste.' It has often been asserted, that power which has +rest is greater than a turbulent power. We shall not attempt to settle +whether Erie or Niagara is greater, but we should certainly choose the +Lake for purposes of navigation. + +Many men are careless of their character in private, but sufficiently +careful in public. The reverse is true of Neal. He has never hesitated +to throw his gauntlet in the face of the public as he threw his letters +of introduction in the fire when he arrived in Europe. But when he comes +into the charmed circle of his home, he is neither reckless nor +pugilistic, but a downright gentleman. We don't mean to say that Neal +never gets in a passion in private, or that he never needed the +wholesome restraint of a strait-waistcoat in the disputes of a Portland +Lyceum or debating-club. We do not give illustrative anecdotes, because +a lively imagination can conceive them, and probably has manufactured +several that have been afloat; still, we dare guess that the subject has +sometimes given facts to base the fictions on. + +We speak of the past. A man with a forty-wildcat power imprisoned in him +is not very likely to travel on from youth to age, keeping the peace on +all occasions. Years bring a calming wisdom. The same man who once swore +five consecutive minutes, because he was forbidden by his landlady to +swear on penalty of leaving her house, and then made all the inmates +vote to refrain from profane language, and rigidly enforced the rule +thus _democratically_ established, is now, after a lapse of more than +thirty years, (particularly provoking impulse aside,) a careful and +dignified gentleman, who might be a Judge, if the public so willed. + +That a long line of intellectual and finely developed ancestry gives a +man a better patent of nobility than all the kings of all countries +could confer, is beginning to be understood and believed among us; +though the old battle against titles and privilege, and the hereditary +descent of both, for a time blinded Americans to the true philosophy of +noble birth. + +Neal's ancestors came originally from Scotland, and exemplify the +proverb that 'bluid is thicker than water,' in more ways than one. They +have a strong feeling of clanship, or, in other words, they are +convinced that it is an honor to be a Neal, and many of the last +generation have given proof positive that their belief is a fact. The +present generation we have little knowledge of, and do not know whether +they fulfill the promise of the name. + +Neal has done good service to the Democracy of our country in many ways, +besides being one of the first and bravest champions of woman's rights. +He has labored for our literature with an ability commensurate with his +zeal, and he has drawn many an unfledged genius from the nest, +encouraged him to try his wings, and magnetized him into +self-dependence. A bold heavenward flight has often been the +consequence. A prophecy of Neal's that an idea or a man would succeed, +has seldom failed of fulfillment. We can not say this of the many +aspiring magazines and periodicals that have solicited the charity of +his name. We recollect, when brass buttons were universally worn on +men's coats, a wag undertook to prove that they were very unhealthy, +from the fact that more than half the persons who wore them suffered +from chronic or acute disease, and died before they had reached a +canonical age. According to this mode of generalization, Neal could be +convicted of causing the premature death of nine tenths of the defunct +periodicals in this country--probably no great sin, if it really lay at +his door. + +In a brief outline sketch, such as we have chosen to produce, our +readers will perceive that only slight justice can be done to a man in +the manifold relations to men and things which contribute to form the +character. + +John Neal's personal appearance is a credit to the country. He is tall, +with a broad chest, and a most imposing presence. One of the finest +sights we ever saw, was Neal standing with his arms folded before a fine +picture. His devotion to physical exercise, and his personal example to +his family in the practice of it--training his wife and children to take +the sparring-gloves and cross the foils with him in those graceful +attitudes which he could perfectly teach, because they were fully +developed in himself--all this has inevitably contributed to the health +and beauty of his beautiful family. + +Few men have had so many right ideas of the art or science of living as +John Neal, and fewer still have acted upon them so faithfully. When we +last saw him, some ten years since--when he had lived more than half a +century--his eye had lost none of its original fire, not a nerve or +sinew was unbraced by care, labor, or struggle. He stood before us, a +noble specimen of the strong and stalwart growth of a new and +unexhausted land. + + NOTE,--The foregoing must have been written years ago, if + one may judge by the color of the paper; and as the writer is now + abroad, so as not to be within reach, the manuscript has been put + into the hands of a gentleman who has been more or less acquainted + with Mr. Neal from his boyhood up, and he has consented to finish + the article by bringing down the record to our day, and putting on + what he calls a 'snapper.' + +Most of what follows, if we do not wholly misunderstand the intimations +that accompany the manuscript, is in the very language of Mr. Neal +himself word for word; gathered up we care not how, whether from +correspondence or conversation, so that there is no breach of manly +trust and no indecorum to be charged. + +'As to my family,' he writes, in reply to some body's questioning, 'I +know not where they originated, nor how. Sometimes I have thought, +although I have never said as much before, that we must have come up of +ourselves--the spontaneous growth of a rude, rocky soil, swept by the +boisterous north-wind, and washed by the heavy surges of some great +unvisited sea. Of course, the writer you mention, who says that my +ancestors--if I ever had any--'came from Scotland,' must know something +that I never heard of, to the best of my recollection and belief. +Somewhere in England I have supposed they originated, and probably along +the coast of Essex; for there, about Portsmouth and Dover, I have always +felt so much at home in the graveyards--among my own household, as it +were, the names being so familiar to me, and the grave-stones now to be +seen in Portsmouth and Dover, New-Hampshire, where the Neals were first +heard of three or four generations ago, being duplicates of some I saw +in Portsmouth and Dover, England. + +'Others have maintained, with great earnestness and plausibility, as if +it were something to brag of, that we have the blood of Oliver Cromwell +in us; and one, at least, who has gone a-field into heraldry, and +strengthens every position with armorial bearings--which only goes to +show the unprofitableness of all such labor, so far as we are +concerned--that we are of the '_red_ O'Neals,' not the _learned_ +O'Neals, if there ever were any, but the 'red O'Neals of Ireland,' and +that I am, in fact, a lineal descendant of that fine fellow who +'_bearded_' Queen Elizabeth in her presence-chamber, with his right hand +clutching the hilt of his dagger. + +'But, for myself, I must acknowledge that if I ever had a +great-great-grandfather, I know not where to dig for him--on my father's +side, I mean; for on the side of my mother I have lots of grandfathers +and great-grandfathers--and furthermore this deponent sayeth not--up to +the days of George Fox; enough, I think, to show clearly that the Neals +did not originate among the aborigines of the New World, whatever may be +supposed to the contrary. And so, in a word, the whole sum and substance +of all I know about my progenitors, male and female, is, that they were +always a sober-minded, conscientious, hard-working race, with a way and +a will of their own, and a habit of seeing for themselves, and judging +for themselves, and taking the consequences. + +'Nor is it true that I am a 'large' or 'tall' man, though, in some +unaccountable way, always passing for a great deal more than I would +ever measure or weigh; and my own dear mother having lived and died in +the belief that I was good six feet, and well-proportioned, like my +father. My inches never exceeded five feet eight-and-a-half, and my +weight never varied from one hundred and forty-seven to one hundred and +forty-nine pounds, for about five-and-forty years; after which, getting +fat and lazy, I have come to weigh from one hundred and sixty-five to +one hundred and seventy-five pounds, without being an inch taller, I am +quite sure.' + +Mr. Neal owns up, it appears, to the following publications, omitted by +the writer of the article you mentioned: 'Rachel Dyer,' one volume; +'Authorship,' one volume; 'Brother Jonathan,' three volumes, (English +edition;) 'Ruth Elder,' one volume; 'One Word More;' 'True Womanhood,' +one volume; magazine articles, reviews, and stories in most of the +British and American monthlies, and in some of the quarterlies, to the +amount of twenty volumes, at least, duodecimo. In addition to which, he +has been a liberal contributor all his life to some of the ablest +newspapers of the age, and either sole or sub-editor, or associate, in +perhaps twenty other enterprises, most of which fell through. + +He claims, too--being a modest man--and others who know him best +acknowledge his claims, we see--that he revolutionized _Blackwood_ and +the British periodical press, at a time when they were all against us; +that he began the war on titles in this country, that he broke up the +lottery system and the militia system, and proposed (through the +_Westminster Review_) the only safe and reasonable plan of emancipation +that ever appeared; that with him originated the question of woman's +rights; that he introduced gymnasia to our people; and, in short, that +he has always been good for something, and always lived to some purpose. +'And furthermore deponent sayeth not.' + + + + +THE SOLDIER AND THE CIVILIAN. + + +When Charles Dickens expressed regret for having written his foolish +_American Notes_, and _Martin Chuzzlewit_, he 'improved the occasion' to +call us a large-hearted and good-natured people, or something to that +effect--I have not his _peccavi_ by me, and write from 'a favorable +general impression.' + +It is not weak vanity which may lead any American to claim that in this +compliment lies a great truth. The American _is_ large-hearted and +good-natured, and when a few of his comrades join in a good work, he +will aid them with a lavish and Jack-tar like generosity. Charity is +peculiarly at home in America. A few generations have accumulated, in +all the older States, hospitals, schools, and beneficent institutions, +practically equal in every respect to those which have been the slow +growth of centuries in any European country. The contributions to the +war, whether of men or money, have been incredible. And there is no +stint and no grumbling. The large heart is as large and generous as +ever. + +The war has, however, despite all our efforts, become an almost settled +institution. This is a pity--we all feel it bitterly, and begin to grow +serious. Still there is no flinching. Flinching will not help; we must +go on in the good cause, in God's name. 'Shall there not be clouds as +well as sunshine?' 'Go in, then'--that is agreed upon. Draft your men, +President Lincoln; raise your money, Mr. Chase, we are ready. To the +last man and the last dollar we are ready. History shall speak of the +American of this day as one who was as willing to spend money for +national honor as he was earnest and keen in gathering it up for private +emolument. Go ahead! + +But let us do every thing advisedly and wisely. + +In the first flush of war, it was not necessary to look so closely at +the capital. We pulled out our loose change and bank-notes, and +scattered them bravely--as we should. Now that more and still more are +needed, we should look about to see how to turn every thing to best +account. For instance, there is the matter of soldiers. Those who rose +in 1861, and went impulsively to battle, acted gloriously--even more +noble will it be with every volunteer who _now_, after hearing of the +horrors of war, still resolutely and bravely shoulders the musket and +dares fate. God sends these times to the world and to men as 'jubilees' +in which all who have lost an estate, be it of a calling or a social +position, may regain it or win a new one. + +But still we want to present _every_ inducement. Already the lame and +crippled soldiers are beginning to return among us. The poor souls, +ragged and sun-burnt, may be seen at every corner. They sit in the parks +with unhealed wounds; they hobble along the streets, many of them weary +and worn; poor fellows! they are greater, and more to be envied than +many a fresh fopling who struts by. And the people feel this. They treat +them kindly, and honor them. + +But would it not be well if some general action could be adopted on the +subject of taking care of all the incurables which this war is so +rapidly sending us? If every township in America would hold meetings and +provide honorably in some way for the returned crippled soldiers, they +would assume no great burden, and would obviate the most serious +drawback which the country is beginning to experience as regards +obtaining volunteers. It has already been observed by the press, that +the scattering of these poor fellows over the country is beginning to +have a discouraging effect on those who should enter the army. It is a +pity; we would very gladly ignore the fact, and continue to treat the +question solely _con entusiasmo_, and as at first; but what is the use +of endeavoring to shirk facts which will only weigh more heavily in the +end from being inconsidered now? Let us go to work generously, +great-heartedly, and good-naturedly, to render the life of every man who +has been crippled for the country as little of a burden as possible. + +Dear readers, it will not be sufficient to guarantee to these men a +pauper's portion among you. I do not pretend to say what you should give +them, or what you should do for them. I only know that there are but two +nations on the face of the earth capable of holding town-meetings and +acting by spontaneous democracy for themselves. One of these is +represented by the Russian serfs, who administer their _mir_ or +'commune' with a certain beaver-like instinct, providing for every man +his share of land, his social position, his rights, so far as they are +able. The Englishman, or German, or Frenchman, is _not_ capable of this +natural town-meeting sort of action. He needs 'laws,' and government, +and a lord or a squire in the chair, or a demagogue on the rostrum. The +poor serf does it by custom and instinct. + +The Bible Communism of the Puritans, and the habit of discussing all +manner of secular concerns in meeting, originated this same ability in +America. To this, more than to aught else, do we owe the growth of our +country. One hundred Americans, transplanted to the wild West and left +alone, will, in one week, have a mayor, and 'selectmen,' a town-clerk, +and in all probability a preacher and an editor. One hundred Russian +serfs will not rise so high as this; but leave them alone in the steppe, +and they will organize a _mir_, elect a _starosta_, or 'old man,' divide +their land very honestly, and take care of the cripples! + +Such nations, but more especially the American, can find out for +themselves, much better than any living editor can tell them, how to +provide liberally for those who fought while they remained at home. The +writer may suggest to them the subject--they themselves can best 'bring +it out.' + +In trials like these it is very essential that our habits of meeting, +discussing and practically acting on such measures, should be more +developed than ever. We have come to the times which _test_ republican +institutions, and to crises when the public meeting--the true +corner-stone of all our practical liberties--should be brought most +boldly, freely, and earnestly into action. Politics and feuds should +vanish from every honorable and noble mind, and all unite in cordial +cooeperation for the good work. Friends, there is _nothing_ you can not +do, if you would only get together, inspire one another, and do your +_very best_. You could raise an army which would drive these rebel +rascals howling into their Dismal Swamps, or into Mexico, in a month, if +you would only combine in earnest and do all you can. + +Hitherto the man of ease, and the Respectable, disgusted by the +politicians, has neglected such meetings, and left them too much to the +Blackguard to manage after his own way. But this is a day of politics no +longer; at least, those who try to engineer the war with a view to the +next election, are in a fair way to be ranked with the enemies of the +country, and to earn undying infamy. The only politics which the honest +man now recognizes is, the best way to save the country; to raise its +armies and fight its battles. It is not McClellan or anti-McClellan, +which we should speak of, but anti-Secession. And paramount among the +principal means of successfully continuing the war, I place this, of +properly caring for the disabled soldier, and of placing before those +who have not as yet enlisted, the fact, that come what may, they will be +well looked after, for life. + +As I said, the common-sense of our minor municipalities will abundantly +provide for these poor fellows, if a spirit can be awakened which shall +sweep over the country and induce the meetings to be held. In many, +something has already been done. But something liberal and large is +requisite. Government will undoubtedly do its share; and this, if +properly done, will greatly relieve our local commonwealths. Here, +indeed, we come to a very serious question, which has been already +discussed in these pages--more boldly, as we are told, than our +cotemporaries have cared to treat it, and somewhat in advance of others. +We refer to our original proposition to liberally divide Southern lands +among the army, and convert the retired soldier to a small planter. Such +men would very soon contrive to hire the 'contraband,' get him to +working, and make something better of him than planterocracy ever did. +At least, this is what Northern ship-captains and farmers contrive to +do, in their way, with numbers of coal-black negroes, and we have no +doubt that the soldier-planter will manage, 'somehow,' to get out a +cotton-crop, even with the aid of hired negroes! Here, again, a bounty +could be given to the wounded. Observe, we mean a bounty which shall, to +as high a degree as is possible or expedient, fully recompense a man for +losing a limb. And as we can find in Texas alone, land sufficient to +nobly reward a vast proportion of our army, it will be seen that I do +not propose any excessive or extravagant reward. + +Between our municipalities and our government, _much_ should be done. +But will not this prove a two-stool system of relief, between which the +disbanded soldier would fall to the ground? Not necessarily. Let our +towns and villages do their share, pledging themselves to take _good_ +care of the disabled veteran, and to find work for all until Government +shall apportion the lands of the conquered among the army. + +And let all this be done _soon_. Let it forthwith form a part of the +long cried for 'policy' which is to inspire our people. If this had been +a firmly determined thing from the beginning, and if we had _dared_ to +go bravely on with it, instead of being terrified at every proposal to +_act_, by the yells and howls of the Northern secessionists, we might +have cleared Dixie out as fire clears tow. 'The enemy,' said one who had +been among them, 'have the devil in them.' If our men had something +solid to look forward to, they too, would have the devil in them, and no +mistake. They fight bravely as it is, without much inducement beyond +patriotism and a noble cause. But the 'secesh' soldier has more than +this--he has the desperation of a traitor in a bad cause, of a fanatic +and of a natural savage. It is no slur at the patriotism of our troops +to say that they would fight better for such a splendid inducement as +we hold out. + +We may as well do all we can for the army--at home and away, here and +there, with all our hearts and souls. For it will come to that sooner or +later. The army is a terrible power, and its power has been, and is to +be, terribly exerted. If we would organize it betimes, prevent it from +becoming a social trouble, or rather make of it a great social support +and a _help_ instead of a future hindrance and a drag, we must be busy +at work providing for it. There it is--destined, perhaps, to rise to a +million--the flower, strength, and intellect of America, our productive +force, our brain--yes, the great majority of our mills, and looms, and +printing-presses, and all that is capital-producing, are there, in those +uniforms. There, friends, lie towns and cities, towers and palace-halls, +literature and national life--for there are the brains and arms which +make these things. Those uniforms are not to be, at least, _should not_ +be, forever there. But manage meanly and weakly and stingily _now_, and +you destroy the cities and fair castles, the uniform remains in the +myriad ranks, war becomes interminable, the soldier becomes nothing but +a soldier--God avert the day!--and you will find yourself some day +telling your grand-children--if you have any, for I can inform you that +the chances of war diminish many other chances--how 'things _might_ have +been, and how finely we _might_ have conquered the enemy and had an +undivided country--God bless us!' + +Will the WOMEN of America take no active part in this movement? + +Many years ago, a German writer--one Kirsten--announced the +extraordinary fact, that in the Atlantic States the proportion of women +who died unmarried, or of 'old maids,' was larger than in any European +country. It is certainly true that, owing to the high standard of +expenses adopted by the children of respectable American parents--and +what American is not 'respectable'?--we are far less apt to rush into +'imprudent' marriages than is generally supposed. But what proportion of +unmarried dames will there be, if drafting continues, and the war +becomes a permanent annual subject of draft? The prospect is seriously +and simply frightful! The wreck of morality in France caused by +Napoleon's wars is notorious, for previous to that time the French +peasantry were not so debauched as they subsequently became. But this +shocking subject requires no comment. + +On with the war! Drive it, push it, send it howling and hissing on like +the wild tornado, like the mad levin-brand, right into the foe! Pay the +soldier--promise--pledge--do any thing and every thing; but raise an +overwhelming force, and end the war. + +Up and fight! + +It is better to die now than see such disaster as awaits this country if +war become a fixed disease. + + + + +VOLUNTEER BOYS. [1750.] + + + 'Hence with the lover who sighs o'er his wine, + Chloes and Phillises toasting; + Hence with the slave who will whimper and whine, + Of ardor and constancy boasting; + Hence with Love's joys, + Follies and noise. + The toast that _I_ give is: 'The Volunteer Boys!'' + + + + +AUTHOR-BORROWING. + + +Bulwer, in narrating the literary career of a young Chinese, states how +one of his works was very severely handled by the Celestial critics: one +of the gravest of the charges brought against it by these poll-shaved, +wooden-shod, little-foot-worshiping, Great-Wall-building mandarins of +literature being its extreme originality! They denounced Fihoti as +having sinned the unpardonable literary sin of writing a book, a large +share of whose ideas was nowhere to be found in the writings of +Confucius. + +But how strange such a charge would sound in our English ears! With us, +if between two authors the most remote resemblance of idea or expression +can be detected, straightway some ultraist stickler for +originality--some Poe--shrieks out, 'Some body must be a thief!' and +forthwith, all along the highways of reviewdom, is sent up the hue and +cry: 'Stop thief! stop thief!' For has not the law thundered from Sinai, +'Thou shalt not steal'? True, plagiarism is nowhere distinctly forbidden +by Moses; but have not critics judicially pronounced it author-_theft_? +Has not metaphor been sounded through every note of its key-board, to +strike out all that is base whereunto to liken it? Have not old Dr. +Johnson's seven-footed words--the tramp of whose heavy brogans has +echoed down the staircase of years even unto our day--declared +plagiarists from the works of buried writers 'jackals, battening on dead +men's thoughts'? + +And yet, after a vast deal of such like catachresis, the orthodoxy of +plagiarism remains still in dispute. What we incorporate among the +cardinal articles of literary faith, China abjures as a dangerous +heresy. But neither our own nor the Chinese creed consists wholly of +tested bullion, but is crude ore, in which the pure gold of truth is +mingled with the dross of error. That is a golden tenet of the +tea-growers which licenses the borrowing of ideas; that 'of the earth, +earthy,' which embargoes every one unborrowed. We build upon a rock when +interdicting plagiarism; but on sand when we make that term inclose +author-theft and author-borrowing. The making direct and unacknowledged +quotations, and palming them off as the quoter's, is a very grave +literary offense. But the expression of similar or even identical +thoughts in different language, in this age of the world must be +tolerated, or else the race of authors soon become as extinct as that of +behemoths and ichthyosauri; and, indeed, far from levying any imposts +upon author-borrowing, rather ought we to vote bounties and pensions to +encourage it. + +Originality of thought with men is impossible. There is in existence a +certain amount of thought, but it all belongs to God. Lord paramount +over the empire of mind as well as matter, he alone is seized, in fee +simple right, of the whole domain: provinces of which men hold, as +fiefs, by vassal tenure, subject to reversion and enfeoffment to +another. Nor can any man absolve himself from his allegiance, and extend +absolute sovereignty over broad tracts of idea-territory; for while +feudal princes vested in themselves, by conquest merely, the ownership +of kingdoms, God became suzerain over the empire of thought by virtue of +creation--for creation confers right of property. We do not, then, +originate the thoughts we call our own; or else Pantheism tells no lie +when it declares that man is God, for the differentia which +distinguishes God from man is absolute creative power. And if man be +thought-creative, he can as well as God give being unto what was +non-existent, and that, too, not mere gross, perishable matter, but +immortal soul; for thought is mind, and mind is spirit, soul, undying, +immortal. Grant that, and you divide God's empire, and enthrone the +creature in equal sovereignty beside his Maker. + +All thought, then, belongs exclusively to God, and is parceled out by +him, as he chooses, among his creature feudatories. As the wind, which +bloweth where it listeth, and no one knoweth whence it cometh, save that +it is sent by God, so is thought, as it blows through our minds. Over +birds, flying at liberty through the free air, boys often advance claims +of ownership more specific than are easily derived from the general +dominion God gave man over the beasts of the field and the birds of the +air; yet, 'All those birds are mine!' exclaims a youngster in +roundabout, with just as much reason as any man can claim, as +exclusively his own, the thoughts which are ever winging their way +through the firmament of mind. + +But considered apart from the relation we sustain to God, none of us are +original with respect to our fellow-men. Few, indeed, are the ideas we +derive by direct grant, or through nature, from our liege lord; but far +the greater share, by hooks or personal contact, we gather through our +fellow-men. Consciously, unconsciously, we all teach--we all learn from, +one another. Association does far more toward forming mind than natural +endowments. As not alone the soil whence it springs makes the oak, but +surrounding elements contribute. Seclude a human mind entirely from +hooks and men, and you may have a man with no ideas borrowed from his +fellows. Such a one, in Germany, once grew up from childhood to manhood +in close imprisonment, and poor Kasper Hauser proved--an idiot. It can +hardly be necessary to suggest the well-known fact, that the greatest +readers of men and books always possess the greatest minds. Such are, +besides, of the greatest service to mankind. For since God has so formed +us that we love to give as well as take, a great independent mind, +complete in itself and incapable of receiving from others, must always +stand somewhat apart from men; and even a great heart, when +conjoined--as it seldom is--with a great head, is rarely able to +drawbridge over the wide moat which intrenches it in solitary +loneliness. Originality ever links with it something of +uncongeniality--a feeling somewhat akin to the egotism of that one who, +when asked why he talked so much to himself, replied--for two reasons: +the one, that he liked to talk to a sensible man; the other, that he +liked to hear a sensible man talk. Divorcing itself from +fellow-sympathies, it broods over its own perfections, till, like +Narcissus, it falls in love with itself. And so, a highly original man +can rarely ever be a highly popular man or author. By the very +super-abundance of his excellencies, his usefulness is destroyed; just +as Tarpeia sank, buried beneath the presents of the Sabine soldiery. A +Man once appeared on earth, of perfect originality; and in him, to an +unbounded intellect was added boundless moral power. But men received +him not. They rejected his teachings; they smote him; they crucified +him. + +But though the right of eminent domain over ideas does and should inhere +in one superior to us, far different is the case with words. These +'incarnations of thought' are of man's device, and therefore his; and +style--the peculiar manner in which one uses words to express ideas--is +individually personal. Indeed, style has been defined the man himself; a +definition, so far as he is recognized only as a revealer of thought, +substantially correct. In an idea word-embodied, the embodier, then, +possesses with God concurrent ownership. The idea itself may be +borrowed, or it may be his so far as discovery gives title; but the +words, in their arrangement, are absolutely his. All ideas are like +mathematical truths: eternal and unchangeable in their essence, and +originate in nature; words like figures, of a fixed value, but of human +invention; and sentences are formulae, embodying oftentimes the same +essential truth, but in shapes as various as their paternity. Words, in +sentences, should then be inviolate to their author. + +Nor is this to value words above ideas--the flesh above the spirit of +which it is but the incarnation. It is not the intrinsic value of each +that we here regard, but the value of the ownership one has in each. +'Deacon Giles and I,' said a poor man, 'own more cows than any five +other men in the county.' 'How many does Deacon Giles own?' asked a +bystander. 'Nineteen.' 'And how many do you?' 'One.' And that one cow, +which that poor man owned, was worth more to _him_ than the nineteen +which were Deacon Giles's. So, when you have determined whose the style +is which enfolds a thought, whose the thought is, is as little worth +dispute as, after its wrappage of corn has been shelled off, the cob's +ownership is worth a quarrel. + +As thoughts bodied in words uttered make up conversation, thought +incarnate in words written constitutes literature. The gross sum of +thought with which God has seen to dower the human mind, though vast, is +finite, and may be exhausted. Indeed, we are told this had been already +done so long ago as times whereof Holy Writ takes cognizance. Since that +time, then, men have been echoing and reechoing the same old ideas. And +though words, too, are finite, their permutations are infinite. What +Himalayan piles of paper, river-coursed by Danubes and Niagaras of ink, +hath the 'itch of writing' aggregated! And yet, Ganganelli says that +every thing that man has ever written might be contained within six +thousand folio volumes, if filled with only original matter. But how +books lie heaped on one another, weighing down those under, weighed down +by those above them; each crushed and crushing; their thoughts, like +bones of skeletons corded in convent vault, mingled in confusion--like +those which Hawthorne tells us Miriam saw in the burial-cellar of the +Capuchin friars in Rome, where, when a dead brother had lain buried an +allotted period, his remains, removed from earth to make room for a +successor, were piled with those of others who had died before him. + +It is said Aurora once sought and gained from Jove the boon of +immortality for one she loved; but forgetting to request also perpetual +youth, Tithonus gradually grew old, his thin locks whitened, his wasting +frame dwindled to a shadow, and his feeble voice thinned down till it +became inaudible. And just so ideas, although immortal, were it not for +author-borrowers, through age grown obsolete, might virtually perish. +But by and by, just as some precious thought is being lost unto the +world, let there come some Medea, by whose potent sorcery that old and +withered idea receives new life-blood through its shrunken veins, and it +starts to life again with recreated vigor--another AEson, with the bloom +of youth upon him. Besides in this way playing the physician to save old +ideas from a burial alive, the author-borrower often delivers many a +prolific mother-thought of a whole family of children--as a prism from +out a parent ray of colorless light brings all the bright colors of the +spectrum, which, from red to violet, were all waiting there only for its +assistance to leap into existence; or sometimes he plays the parson, +wedlocking thoughts from whose union issue new; as from yellow wedded to +red springs orange, a new, a secondary life; or enacts, maybe, the +brood-hen's substitute. Many a thought is a Leda egg, imprisoning twin +life-principles, which,, incubated in the eccaleobion brain of an +author-borrower, have blessed the world; but without such a +foster-parent, in some neglected nest staled and addled, had never burst +the shell. + +Author-borrowing should also be encouraged, because it tends to +language's perfection, and thus to incrementing the value of the ideas +it vehicles; for though a gilding diction and elegant expression may not +directly increase a thought's intrinsic worth, yet by bestowing beauty +it increases its utility, and so adds relative value--just as a rosewood +veneering does to a basswood table. There may be as much raw timber in a +slab as in a bunch of shingles, but the latter is worth the most; it +will find a purchaser where the former would not. So there may be as +much truly valuable thought in a dull sermon as in a lively lecture; +but the lecture will please, and so instruct, where the dull sermon will +fall on an inattentive ear. Moreover, author minds are of two classes, +the one deep-thinking, the other word-adroit. Providence bestows her +favors frugally; and with the power of quarrying out huge lumps of +thought, ability to work them over into graceful form is rarely given. +This is no new doctrine, but a truth clearly recognized in metaphysics, +and evidenced in history. Cromwell was a prodigious thinker; but in +language, oh! how deficient. His thoughts, struggling to force +themselves out of that sphynx-like jargon which he spake and wrote, +appear like the treasures of the shipwrecked Trojans, swimming '_rari in +gurgite vasto_'--Palmyra columns, reared in the midst of a desert of +sentences. And Coleridge--than whom in the mines of mental science few +have dug deeper, and though Xerxes-hosts of word-slaves waited on his +pen--often wrote apparently mere bagatelle--the most transcendental +nonsense. Yet he who takes the pains to husk away his obscurity of style +will find solid ears of thought to recompense his labor. Bentham and +Kant required interpreters--Dumont and Cousin--to make understood what +was well worth understanding. These two kinds of +authors--thought-creditors and borrowing expressionists--are as mutually +necessary to each other to bring out idea in its most perfect shape, as +glass and mercury to mirror objects. Dim, indeed, is the reflection of +the glass without its coating of quicksilver; and amalgam, without a +plate on which to spread it, can never form a mirror. The metal and the +silex are + + 'Useless each without the other;' + +but wed them, and from their union spring life-like images of life. + +But it may be objected that in trying to improve a thought we often mar +it; just as in transplanting shrubs from the barren soil in which they +have become fast rooted, to one more fertile, we destroy them. 'Just as +the fabled lamps in the tomb of Terentia burned underground for ages, +but when removed into the light of day, went out in darkness.' That this +sometimes occurs, we own. Some ideas are as fragile as butterflies, whom +to handle is to destroy. But such are exceptions only, and should not +preclude attempts at improvement. If a bungler tries and fails, let him +be Anathema, Maranathema; but let not his failure deter from trial a +genuine artist. Nor is it an ignoble office to be thus shapers only of +great thinkers' thoughts--Python interpreters to oracles. Nor is his +work of slight account who thus--as sunbeams gift dark thunder-clouds +with 'silver lining' and a fringe of purple, as Time with ivy drapes a +rugged wall--hangs the beauties of expression round a rude but sterling +thought. Nay, oftentimes the shaper's labor is worth more than the +thought he shapes. For if the stock out of which the work is wrought be +ever more valuable than the workman's skill, then let canvas and +paint-pots impeach the fame of Raphael; rough blocks from Paros and +Pentelicus, the gold and ivory of the Olympian Jove; tear from the brow +of Phidias the laurel wreath with which the world has crowned him. +Supply of raw material is little without the ability to use it. Furnish +three men with stone and mortar, and while one is building an unsightly +heap of clumsy masonry, the architect will rear up a magnificent +cathedral--an Angelo, a St. Peter's. And so when ideas, which in their +crudeness are often as hard to be digested as unground corn, are run +through the mill of another's mind, and appear in a shape suited to +satisfy the most dyspeptic stomachs, does not the miller deserve a toll? + +Finally, author-borrowing has been hallowed by its practice, in their +first essays, by all our greatest writers. Turn to the scroll on which +the world has written the names of those it holds as most illustrious. +How was it with him whom English readers love to call the +'myriad-minded?' Shakespeare began by altering old plays, and his +indebtedness to history and old legends is by no means slight. How with +him who sang 'of man's first disobedience' and exodus from Eden? Even +Milton did not, Elijah-like, draw down his fire direct from heaven, but +kindled with brands, borrowed from Greek and Hebrew altars, the +inspiration which sent up the incense-poetry of a Lost Paradise. And all +the while that Maro sang 'Arms and the Man,' a refrain from the harp of +Homer was sounding in his ears, unto whose tones so piously he keyed and +measured his own notes, that oftentimes we fancy we can hear the strains +of 'rocky Scio's blind old bard' mingling in the Mantuan's melody. If +thus it has been with those who sit highest and fastest on +Parnassus--the crowned kings of mind--how has it been with the mere +nobility? What are Scott's poetic romances, but blossomings of engrafted +scions on that slender shoot from out the main trunk of English +poetry--the old border balladry? Campbell's polished elegance of style, +and the 'ivory mechanism of his verse,' was born the natural child of +Beattie and Pope. Byron had Gifford in his eye when he wrote 'English +Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' and Spenser when he penned the +'Pilgrimage.' Pope, despairing of originality, and taking Dryden for his +model, sought only to polish and to perfect. Gray borrowed from Spenser, +Spenser from Chaucer, Chaucer from Dante, and Dante had ne'er been Dante +but for the old Pagan mythology. Sterne and Hunt and Keats were only + + Bees, in their own volumes hiving + Borrowed sweets from others' gardens. + +And thus it ever is. The inceptions of true genius are always +essentially imitations. A great writer does not begin by ransacking for +the odd and new. He re-models--betters. Trusting not hypotheses +unproven, he demonstrates himself the proposition ere he wagers his +faith on the corollary; and it is thus that in time he grows to be a +discoverer, an inventor, an _originator_. + +Toward originality all should steer; but can only hope to reach it +through imitation. For if originality be the Colchis where the golden +fleece of immortality is won, imitation must be the Argo in which we +sail thither. + + + + +INTERVENTION. + + + Intervene! and see what you'll catch + In a powder-mill with a lighted match. + Intervene! if you think fit, + By jumping into the bottomless pit. + Intervene! How you'll gape and gaze + When you see all Europe in a blaze! + Russia gobbling your world half in, + Red Republicans settling with _sin_; + Satan broke loose and nothing between-- + _That's_ what you'll catch if you intervene! + + + + +MACCARONI AND CANVAS. + +VII. + + +'A REEL TITIANO FOR SAL.' + +There was a shop occupied by a dealer in paintings, engravings, +intaglios, old crockery, and _Bric-a-brac_-ery generally, down the Via +Condotti, and into this shop Mr. William Browne, of St. Louis, one +morning found his way. He had been induced to enter by reading in the +window, written on a piece of paper, + +'A REEL TITIANO FOR SAL,' + +and as he wisely surmised that the dealer intended to notify the English +that he had a painting by Titian for sale, he went in to see it. + +Unfortunately for Mr. Browne, familiarly known as Uncle Bill, he had one +of those faces that invariably induced Roman tradesmen to resort to the +Oriental mode of doing business, namely, charging three hundred per cent +profit; and as this dealer having formerly been a courier, +commissionaire and pander to English and American travelers, naturally +spoke a disgusting jargon of Italianized English, and had what he +believed were the most distinguished manners: _he_ charged five hundred +per cent. + +'I want,' said Uncle Bill to the 'brick-Bat' man, 'to see your Titian.' + +'I shall expose 'im to you in one moment, sare; you walk this way. He's +var' fine pickshoor, var' fine. You ben long time in Rome, sare?' + +No reply from Uncle Bill: his idea was, even a wise man may ask +questions, but none but fools answer fools. + +Brick-bat man finds that his customer has ascended the human scale one +step; he prepares 'to spring dodge' Number two on him. + +'Thare, sar, thare is Il Tiziano! I spose you say you see notheeng bote +large peas board: zat peas board was one table for two, tree hundret +yars; all zat time ze pickshoor was unbeknounst undair ze table. Zey +torn up ze table, and you see a none-doubted Tiziano. Var' fine +pickshoor!' + +'Do you know,' asked Uncle Bill, 'if it was in a temperance family all +that time?' + +'I am not acquent zat word, demprance--wot it means?' + +'Sober,' was the answer. + +'Yas, zat was in var' sobair fam'ly--in convent of nons.' + +'That will account for its being undiscovered so long--all the world +knows they are not inquisitive! If it had been in a drinking-house, some +body falling under the table would have seen it--wouldn't they?' + +Brick-bat reflects, and comes to the conclusion that the 'eldairly cove' +is wider-awake than he believed him, at first sight. + +'Now I torne zis board you see on ze othaire side, ze Bella Donna of +Tiziano. Zere is one in ze Sciarra palace, bote betwane you and I, I +don't believe it is gin'wine.' + +'I don't know much about paintings,' spoke Uncle Bill, 'but I know I've +seen seventy-six of these Belli Donners, and each one was sworn to as +the original picture!' + +'Var' true, sare, var' true, Tiziano Vermecellio was grate pantaire, man +of grate mind, and when he got holt onto fine subjick he work him ovair +and ovair feefty, seexty times. Ze chiaro-'scuro is var' fine, and ze +depfs of his tone somethings var' deep, vary. Look at ze flaish, sare, +you can pinch him, and, sare, you look here, I expose grand secret to +you. I take zis pensnife, I scratgis ze pant. Look zare!' + +'Well,' said Uncle Bill, 'I don't see any thing.' + +'You don't see anne theengs! Wot you see under ze pant?' + +'It looks like dirt.' + +'_Cospetto!_ zat is ze gr-and prep-par-ra-tion zat makes ze flaish of +Tiziano more natooral as life. You know grate pantaire, Mistaire Leaf, +as lives in ze Ripetta? Zat man has spend half his lifes scratging +Tiziano all to peases, for find out 'ow he mak's flaish: now he believes +he found out ze way, bote, betwane you and I----' Here the Brick-bat +man conveyed, by a shake of his head and a tremolo movement of his left +hand, the idea that 'it was all in vain.' + +'What do you ask for the picture?' asked Uncle Bill + +The head of the Brick-bat man actually disappeared between his shoulders +as he shrugged them up, and extended his hands at his sides like the +flappers of a turtle. Uncle Bill looked at the man in admiration; he had +never seen such a performance before, save by a certain contortionist in +a traveling circus, and in his delight he asked the man, when his head +appeared, if he wouldn't do that once more, only once more! + +In his surprise at being asked to perform the trick, he actually went +through it again. For which, Uncle Bill thanked him, kindly, and again +asked the price of the Titian. + +'I tak' seex t'ousand scudi for him, not one baiocch less.' + +'It an't dear,'specially for those who have the money to +scatterlophisticate,' replied Uncle Bill cheerfully. + +'No, sare, it ees dogs chip, var' chip. I have sevral Englis' want to +buy him bad; I shall sell him some days to some bodies. Bote, sare, will +you 'ave ze goodniss to write down on peas paper zat word, var' fine +word, you use him minit 'go--scatolofistico sometheengs--I wis' to larn +ze Englis' better as I spiks him.' + +'Certainly; give me a pencil and paper, I'll write it down, and you'll +astonish some Englishman with it, I'll bet a hat.' + +So it was written down; and if any one ever entered a shop in the +Condotti where there was a Titiano for Sal, and was 'astonished' by +hearing that word used, they may know whence it came. + +Mr. Browne, after carefully examining the usual yellow marble model of +the column of Trajan, the alabaster pyramid of Caius Cestius, the verd +antique obelisks, the bronze lamps, lizards, marble _tazze_, and +paste-gems of the modern-antique factories, the ever-present Beatrice +Cenci on canvas, and the water-color costumes of Italy, made a purchase +of a Roman mosaic paper-weight, wherein there was a green parrot with a +red tail and blue legs, let in with minute particles of composition +resembling stone, and left the Brick-bat man alone with his Titiano for +Sal. + + +SO LONG! + +Rocjean came into Caper's studio one morning, evidently having something +to communicate. + +'Are you busy this morning? If not, come along with me; there is +something to be seen--something that beats the Mahmoudy Canal of the +Past, or the Suez Canal of the Present, for wholesale slaughter; for I +do assure you, on the authority of Hassel, that nine hundred and +thirty-six million four hundred and sixty-one thousand people died +before it was finished!' + +'That must be a work worth looking at. Why, the Pyramids must be as +anthills to Chimborazo in comparison to it! Nine hundred and odd +millions of mortals! Why, that is about the number dying in a +generation--and these have passed away while it was being completed? It +ought to be a master-piece.' + +'Can't we get a glass of wine round here?' asked Rocjean, looking at his +watch; 'it is about luncheon-time, and I have a charming little thirst.' + +'Oh! yes, there is a wine-shop only three doors from here, pure Roman. +Let us go: we can stand out in the street and drink if you are afraid to +go in.' + +Leaving the studio, they walked a few steps to a house that was +literally all front-door; for the entrance was the entire width of the +building, and a buffalo-team could have passed in without let. Outside +stood a wine-cart, from which they were unloading several small casks +of wine. The driver's seat had a hood over it, protecting him from the +sun, as he lazily sleeps there, rumbling over the tufa road, to or from +the Campagna, and around the seat were painted in gay colors various +patterns of things unknown. In the autumn, vine-branches with pendent, +rustling leaves decorate hood and horse, while in spring or summer, a +bunch of flowers often ornaments this gay-looking wine-cart. + +The interior of the shop was dark, dingy, sombre, and dirty enough to +have thrown an old Flemish Interior artist into hysterics of delight. +There was an _olla podrida_ browniness about it that would have +entranced a native of Seville; and a collection of dirt around, that +would have elevated a Chippeway Indian to an ecstasy of delight. The +reed-mattings hung against the walls were of a gulden ochre-color, the +smoked walls and ceiling the shade of asphaltum and burnt sienna, the +unswept stone pavement a warm gray, the old tables and benches very rich +in tone and dirt; the back of the shop, even at midday, dark, and the +eye caught there glimpses of arches, barrels, earthen jars, tables and +benches resting in twilight, and only brought out in relief by the faint +light always burning in front of the shrine of the Virgin, that hung on +one of the walls. + +In a wine-shop this shrine does not seem out of place, it is artistic; +but in a lottery-office, open to the light of day, and glaringly +common-place, the Virgin hanging there looks much more like the goddess +Fortuna than Santa Maria. + +But they are inside the wine-shop, and the next instant a black-haired +gipsy-looking woman with flashing, black eyes, warming up the sombre +color of the shop by the fiery red and golden silk handkerchief which +falls from the back of her head, Neapolitan fashion, illuminating that +dusky old den like fireworks, asks them what they will order? + +'A foglietta of white wine.' + +'Sweet or dry?' she asks. + +'Dry,' (_asciutto_,) said Rocjean. + +There it is on the table, in a glass flask, brittle as virtue, light as +sin, and fragile as folly. They are called Sixtusses, after that pious +old Sixtus V. who hanged a publican and wine-seller sinner in front of +his shop for blasphemously expressing his opinion as to the correctness +of charging four times as much to put the fluoric-acid government stamp +on them as the glass cost. However, taxes must be raised, and the +thinner the glass the easier it is broken, so the Papal government +compel the wine-sellers to buy these glass bubbles, forbidding the sale +of wine out of any thing else save the _bottiglie_; and as it raises +money by touching them up with acid, why, the people have to stand it. +These _fogliette_ have round bodies and long, broad necks, on which you +notice a white mark made with the before-mentioned chemical preparation; +up to this mark the wine should come, but the attendant generally takes +thumb-toll, especially in the restaurants where foreigners go, for the +Roman citizen is not to be swindled, and will have his rights: the +single expression, 'I AM A ROMAN CITIZEN,' will at times save him at +least two _baiocchi_, with which he can buy a cigar. There was a time +when these words would have checked the severest decrees of the highest +magistrate: now when they fire off 'that gun,' the French soldiers stand +at its mouth, laugh, and say; '_Boom!_ you have no balls for your +cartridges!' + +The wine finished, our two artists took up their line of march for the +object that had outlived so many millions on millions of human beings, +and at last reached it, discovering its abode afar off, by the crowd of +fair-and unfair, or red-haired Saxons, who were thronging up a staircase +of a house near the Ripetta, as if a steamboat were ringing her last +bell and the plank were being drawn in. + +'And pray, can you tell me, Mister Buller, if it's a positive fact that +the man has been so long as they say, at work on the thing?' + +'And ah! I haven't the slightest doubt of it, myself. I've been told +that he has worked on it, to be sure, for full thirty years; and I may +say I am delighted, that he has it done at last, and that it is to be +packed up and sent away to St. Petersburg next week. And how do you like +the Hotel Minerva? I think it's not a very dirty inn, but the waiters +are very demanding, and the fleas--' + +'I beg you won't speak of them, it makes my blood run cold. Have you +seen the last copy of _Galignani_? The Americans, I am glad to see, have +had trouble with us, and I hope they will be properly punished. Do you +know the Duke of Bigghed is in town?' + +'Really! and when did he come--and where is the Duchess? oh!--she's a +very amiable lady--but here's the picture!' + +Ushered in, or preceded by this rattle-headed talk, Caper and Rocjean +stood at last before Ivanhof's celebrated painting--finished at last! +Thirty years' work, and the result? + +A very unsatisfactory stream of water, a crowd of Orientals, and our +Saviour descending a hill. + +The general impression left on the mind after seeing it, was like that +produced by a wax-work show. Nature was travestied; ease, grace, +freedom, were wanting: evidently the thirty years might have been better +spent collecting beetles or dried grasses. + +Around the walls of the studio hung sketches painted during visits the +artist had made to the East. Here were studies of Eastern heads, +costumes, trees, soil by river-side, sand in the desert, copied with +scrupulous care and precise truth, yet, when they were all together in +the great painting, the combined effect was a failure. + +The artist, they said, had, during this long period, received an annual +pension of so many roubles from the Russian government, and had taken +his time about it. At last it was completed; the painting that had +outlasted a generation was to be sent to St. Petersburg to hibernate +after a lifetime spent in sunny Italy. Well! after all, it was better +worth the money paid for it than that paid for nine tenths of those +kingly toys in the baby-house Green Chambers of Dresden. _Le Roi +s'amuse!_ + +And the white-haired Saxons came in shoals to the studio to see the +painting with thirty years' labor on it, and accordingly as their +oracles had judged it, so did they: for behold! gay colors are tabooed +in the mythology of the Pokerites, and are classed with perfumes, +dance-music, and jollity, and art earns a precarious livelihood in their +land, where all knowledge of it is supposed to be tied up with the +enjoyers of primogeniture. + + +ROMAN THEATRES. + +The Apollo, where grand opera, sandwiched with moral ballets, is given +for the benefit of foreigners, principally, would be a fine house if you +could only see it; but when Caper was in Rome, the oil-lamps, showing +you where to sit down, did not reveal its proportions, or the dresses of +the box-beauties, to any advantage; and as oil-lamps will smoke, there +settled a veil over the theatre towards the second act, that draped +Comedy like Tragedy, and then set her to coughing. + +During Carnival a melancholy ball or two was given there: a few wild +foreigners venturing in masked, believed they had mistaken the house, +for although many women were wandering around in domino, they found the +Roman young men unmasked, walking about dressed in canes and those +dress-coats, familiarly known as tail-coats, which cause a man to look +like a swallow with the legs of a crane, and wearing on their impassive +faces the appearance of men waiting for an oyster-supper--or an +earthquake. + +The commissionaire at the hotel always recommends strangers to go to the +Apollo: 'I will git you loge, sare, first tier--more noble, sare.' + +The Capranica Theatre is next in size and importance; it is beyond the +Pantheon, out of the foreign quarter of Rome, and you will find in it a +Roman audience--to a limited extent. Salvini acted there in _Othello_, +and filled the character admirably; it is needless to say that Iago +received even more applause than Othello; Italians know such men +profoundly--they are Figaros turned undertakers. Opera was given at the +Capranica when the Apollo was closed. + +The Valle is a small establishment, where Romans, pure blood, of the +middle class, and the nobility who did not hang on to foreigners, were +to be found. Giuseppina Gassier, who has since sung in America, was +prima-donna there, appearing generally in the _Sonnambula_. + +But the Capranica Theatre was the resort for the Roman _minenti_, decked +in all their bravery. Here came the shoemaker, the tailor, and the small +artisan, all with their wives or women, and with them the wealthy +peasant who had ten cents to pay for entrance. Here the audience wept +and laughed, applauded the actors, and talked to each other from one +side of the house to the other. Here the plays represented Roman life in +the rough, and were full of words and expressions not down in any +dictionary or phrase-book; nor in these local displays were forgotten +various Roman peculiarities of accentuation of words, and curious +intonations of voice. The Roman people indulge in chest-notes, leaving +head-notes to the Neapolitans, who certainly do not possess such +smoothness of tongue as would classify them among their brethren in the +old proverb: 'When the confusion of tongues happened at the building of +the Tower of Babel, if the Italian had been there, Nimrod would have +made him a plasterer!' + +You will do well, if you want to learn from the stage and audience, the +Roman _plebs_, their customs and language, to attend the Capranica +Theatre often; to attend it in 'fatigue-dress,' and in gentle mood, +being neither shocked nor astonished if a good-looking Roman youth +should call your attention to the fact that there is a beautiful girl in +the box to the left hand, and inquire if you know whether she is the +daughter of Santi Stefoni, the grocer? And should the man on the other +side offer you some pumpkin-seeds to eat, by all means accept a few; you +can't tell what they may bring forth, if you will only plant them +cheerfully. + +Do not think it strange if a doctor on the stage recommends conserve of +vipers to a consumptive patient; for these poisonous reptiles are caught +in large numbers in the mountains back of Rome, and sold to the city +apothecaries, who prepare large quantities of them for their customers. + +When you see, perhaps the hero of the play, thrown into a paroxysm of +anger and fiery wrath by some untoward event, proceed calmly to cut up +two lemons, squeeze into a tumbler their juice, and then drink it +down--learn that it is a common Roman remedy for anger. + +Or if, when a piece of crockery, or other fragile article, may be +broken, you notice one of the actors carefully counting the pieces, do +not think it is done in order to reconstruct the article, but to guide +him in the purchase of a lottery-ticket. + +When you notice that on one of his hands the second finger is twined +over the first, of the Rightful-heir in presence of the Wrongful-heir, +you may know that the first is guarding himself against the Evil Eye +supposed to belong to the second. + +And--the list could be extended to an indefinite length--you will learn +more, by going to the Capranica. + +At the Metastasio Theatre there was a French vaudeville company, +passably good, attended by a French audience, the majority officers and +soldiers. Here were presented such attractive plays as _La Femme qui +Mord_, or 'The Woman who Bites;' _Sullivan_, the hero of which gets +_bien gris_, very gray, that is, blue, that is, very tipsy, and at the +close, astonishes the audience with the moral: To get tight is human! +_Dalilah_, etc., etc. The French are not very well beloved by the Romans +pure and simple; it is not astonishing, therefore, that their language +should be laughed at. One morning Rome woke up to find placards all +over the city, headed: + + FRENCH + + TAUGHT IN THIRTY-SIX LESSONS! + + Apply to Monsieur SO-AND-SO. + +A few days afterward appeared a fearful wood-cut, the head of a jackass, +with his tongue hanging down several inches, and under it, these words, +in Italian: 'The only tongue yet learnt in less than thirty-six +lessons!' + +Caper, seated one night in the parquette of the Metastasio, had at his +side a French infantry soldier. In conversation he asked him: + +'How long have you been in Rome?' + +'Three years, _Mossu_.' + +'Wouldn't you like to return to France?' + +'Not at all.' + +'Why not?' + +'Wine is cheap, here, tobacco not dear, the ladies are extremely kind: +_voila tout!_' + +'You have all these in France.' + +'_Oui, Mossu!_ but when I return there I shall be a farmer again; and +it's a frightful fact that you may plow your heart out without turning +up but a very small quantity of these articles there!' + +French soldiers still protect Rome--and 'these articles there.' + + +THE BEARDS OF ART. + +'Can you tell me,' said Uncle Bill Browne to Rocjean, with the air of a +man about to ask a hard conundrum, 'why beards, long hair, and art, +always go together?' + +'Of course, art draws out beards along with talent; paints and bristles +must go together; but high-art drives the hair of the head in, and +clinches it. Among artists first and last there have been men with giant +minds, and they have known it was their duty to show their mental power: +the beard is the index.' + +'But the beard points downward,' suggested Caper, 'and not upward.' + +'That depends----' + +'On _pomade Hongroise_--or beeswax,' interrupted Caper. + +'Exactly; but let me answer Uncle Bill. To begin, we may safely assert +that an artist's life--here in Rome, for instance--is about as +independent a one as society will tolerate; its laws, as to shaving +especially, he ignores, and caring very little for the Rules of the +Toilette, as duly published by the--_bon ton_ journals, uses his razor +for mending lead-pencils, and permits his beard to enjoy long vacation +rambles. Again: those who first set the example of long beards, Leonardo +da Vinci, for example, who painted his own portrait with a full beard a +foot long, were men who moved from principle, and I have the belief that +were Leonardo alive to-day, he would say: + +"My son, and well-beloved Rocjean, _zitto!_ and let ME talk. Know, then, +that I did permit my beard luxuriant length--for a reason. Thou dost not +know, but I do, that among the ancient Egyptians they worshiped in their +deity the male and female principle combined; so the exponents of this +belief, the Egyptian priests, endeavored in their attire to show a +mingling of the male and female sex; they wore long garments like women, +_vergogna!_ they wore long hair, _guai!_ and they SHAVED THEIR FACES! It +pains me to say, that their indecent example is followed even to this +day, by the priests of what should be a purer and better religion. + +"_Silenzio!_ I have not yet said my say. Among Eastern nations, their +proverbs, and what is better, their customs, show a powerful protest +against this impure old faith. You have seen the flowing beards of the +Mohammedans, especially the Turks, and their short-shaved heads of hair, +and you may have heard of their words of wisdom: + +"'Long hair, little brain.' + +"And that eloquent sentence: + +"'Who has no beard has no authority.' + +"They have other sayings, which I can not approve of; for instance: + +"'Do not buy a red-haired person, do not sell one, either; if you have +any in the house, drive them away.' + +"I say I do not approve of this, for the majority of the English have +red heads, and people who want to buy my pictures I never would drive +out of my house, _mai!_" + +'Come,' said Caper, 'Leonardo no longer speaks when there is a question +of buying or selling. Assume the first person.' + +'Another excellent reason for artists in Rome to wear beards is, that +where their foreign names can not be pronounced, they are often called +by the size, color, or shape, of this face-drapery. This is particularly +the case in the Cafe Greco, where the waiters, who have to charge for +coffee, etc., when the artist does not happen to have the change about +him, are compelled to give him a name on their books, and in more than +one instance, I know that they are called from their beards, I have a +memorandum of these nicknames: I am called _Barbone_, or Big-bearded; +and you, Caper, are down as _Sbarbato Inglese_, the Shaved Englishman.' + +'Hm!' spoke Caper, 'I an't an Englishman, and I don't shave; my beard +has to come yet.' + +'What is my name?' asked Uncle Bill. + +'_Puga Sempre_, or He Pays Always. A countryman of mine is called _Baffi +Rici_, or Big Moustache; another one, _Barbetta_, Little Beard; another, +_Barbaccia_, Shabby Beard; another, _Barba Nera_, Black Beard; and, of +course, there is a _Barba Rossa_, or Red Beard. Some of the other names +are funny enough, and would by no means please their owners. There is +_Zoppo Francese_, the Lame Frenchman; _Scapiglione_, the Rowdy; +_Pappagallo_, the Parrot; _Milordo_; _Furioso_; and one friend of ours +is known, whenever he forgets to pay two baiocchi for his coffee, as +_San Pietro_!' + +'Well,' said Uncle Bill, 'I'll tell you why I thought you artists wore +long beards: that when you were hard up, and couldn't buy brushes, you +might have the material ready to make your own.' + +'You're wrong, Uncle,' remarked Caper; 'when we can't buy them, we get +trusted for them--that's our way of having a brush with the enemy.' + +'That will do, Jim, that will do; say no more. None of the artists' +beards here, can compare with one belonging to a buffalo-and-prairie +painter who lives out in St. Louis--it is so long he ties the ends +together and uses it for a boot-jack. Good-night, boys, good-night!' + + +A CALICO-PAINTER. + +Rocjean was finishing his after-dinnerical coffee and cigar, when +looking up from _Las Novedades_, containing the latest news from Madrid, +and in which he had just read _en Roma es donde hay mas mendigos_, Rome, +is where most beggars are found; London, where most engineers, lost +women, and rat-terriers, abound; Brussels, where women who smoke, are +all round--looking up from this interesting reading, he saw opposite him +a young man, whose acquaintance he knew at a glance, was worth making. +Refinement, common-sense, and energy were to be read plainly in his +face. When he left the cafe, Rocjean asked an artist, with long hair, +who was fast smoking himself to the color of the descendants of Ham, if +he knew the man?' + +'No-o-oo, I believe he's some kind of a calico-painter.' + +'What?' + +'Oh! a feller that makes designs for a calico-mill.' + +Not long afterward Rocjean was introduced to him, and found him, as +first impressions taught him he would--a man well worth knowing. Ho was +making a holiday-visit to Rome, his settled residence being in Paris, +where his occupation was designer of patterns for a large calico-mill in +the United States. A New-Yorker by birth, consequently more of a +cosmopolitan than the provincial life of our other American cities will +tolerate or can create in their children, Charles Gordon was every inch +a man, and a bitter foe to every liar and thief. He was well informed, +for he had, as a boy, been solidly instructed; he was polite, refined, +for he had been well educated. His life was a story often told: +mercantile parent, very wealthy; son sent to college; talent for art, +developed at the expense of trigonometry and morning-prayers; mercantile +parent fails, and falls from Fifth avenue to Brooklyn, preparatory to +embarking for the land of those who have failed and fallen--wherever +that is. Son wears long hair, and believes he looks like the painter who +was killed by a baker's daughter, writes trashy verses about a man who +was wronged, and went off and howled himself to a long repose, sick of +this vale of tears, et cetera. Finally, in the midst of his despair, +long hair, bad poetry and painting, an enterprising friend, who sees he +has an eye for color, its harmonies and contrasts, raises him with a +strong hand into the clear atmosphere of exertion for a useful and +definite end--makes him a 'calico-painter.' + +It was a great scandal for the Bohemians of art to find this +calico-painter received every where in refined and intelligent society, +while they, with all their airs, long hairs, and shares of impudence, +could not enter--they, the creators of Medoras, Magdalens, Our Ladies of +Lorette, Brigands' Brides, Madame not In, Captive Knights, Mandoline +Players, Grecian Mothers, Love in Repose, Love in Sadness, Moonlight on +the Waves, Last Tears, Resignation, Broken Lutes, Dutch Flutes, and +other mock-sentimental-titled paintings. + +'God save me from being a gazelle!' said the monkey. + +'God save us from being utility calico-painters!' cried the high-minded, +dirty cavaliers who were not cavaliers, as they once more rolled over in +their smoke-house. + +'In 1854,' said Gordon, one day, to Rocjean, after their acquaintance +had ripened into friendship, 'I was indeed in sad circumstances, and was +passing through a phase of life when bad tobacco, acting on an empty +stomach, gave me a glimpse of the Land of the Grumblers. One long year, +and all that was changed; then I woke up to reality and practical life +in a 'Calico-Mill;' then I wrote the lines you have asked me about. Take +them for what they are worth. + + +REDIVIVUS. + +MDCCCLVI + + 'He sat in a garret in Fifty-four, + To welcome Fifty-five. + 'God knows,' said he, 'if another year + Will find this man alive. + I was born for love, I live in song, + Yet loveless and songless I'm passing along, + And the world?--Hurrah! + Great soul, sing on! + + 'He sat in the dark, in Fifty-four, + To welcome Fifty-five. + 'God knows,' said he, 'if another year + I'll any better thrive. + I was born for light, I live in the sun, + Yet in, darkness, and sunless, I'm passing on, + And the world?--Hurrah! + Great soul, shine on!' + + 'He sat in the cold, in Fifty-four, + To welcome Fifty-five. + 'God knows,' said he, 'I'm fond of fire, + From warmth great joy derive. + I was born warm-hearted, and oh! it's wrong + For them all to coldly pass along: + And the world?--Hurrah! + Great soul, burn on!' + + 'He sat in a home, in Fifty-five, + To welcome Fifty-six. + 'Throw open the doors!' he cried aloud, + 'To all whom Fortune kicks! + I was born for love, I was born for song, + And great-hearted MEN my halls shall throng. + And the world?--Hurrah! + Great soul, sing on!' + + 'He sat in bright light, in Fifty-five, + To welcome Fifty-six. + 'More lights!' he cried out with joyous shout, + 'Night ne'er with day should mix. + I was born for light, I live in the sun, + In the joy of others my life's begun. + And the world?--Hurrah! + Great soul, shine on!' + + 'He sat in great warmth, in Fifty-five, + To welcome Fifty-six, + In a glad and merry company + Of brave, true-hearted Bricks! + 'I was born for warmth, I was born for love, + I've found them all, thank GOD above! + And the world?--Ah! bah! + Great soul, move on!'' + + +A PATRON OF ART. + +The Roman season was nearly over: travelers were making preparations to +fly out of one gate as the Malaria should enter by the other; for, +according to popular report, this fearful disease enters, the last day +of April, at midnight, and is in full possession of the city on the +first day of May. Rocjean, not having any fears of it, was preparing not +only to meet it, but to go out and spend the summer with it; it costs +something, however, to keep company with La Malaria, and our artist had +but little money: he must sell some paintings. Now it was unfortunate +for him that though a good painter, he was a bad salesman; he never kept +a list of all the arrivals of his wealthy countrymen or other strangers +who bought paintings; he never ran after them, laid them under +obligations with drinks, dinners, and drives; for he had neither the +inclination nor that capital which is so important for a +picture-merchant to possess in order to drive--a heavy trade, and +achieve success--such as it is. Rocjean had friends, and warm ones; so +that whenever they judged his finances were in an embarrassed state, +they voluntarily sent wealthy sensible as well as wealthy insensible +patrons of art to his aid, the latter going as Dutch galliots laden with +doubloons might go to the relief of a poor, graceful felucca, thrown on +her beam-ends by a squall. + +One morning there glowed in Rocjean's studio the portly forms of Mr. and +Mrs. Cyrus Shodd, together with the tall, fragile figure of Miss Tillie +Shodd, daughter and heiress apparent and transparent. Rocjean welcomed +them as he would have manna in the desert, for he judged by the air and +manner of the head of the family, that he was on picture-buying bent. He +even gayly smiled when Miss Shodd, pointing out to her father, with her +parasol, some beauty in a painting on the easel, run its point along the +canvas, causing a green streak from the top of a stone pine to extend +from the tree same miles into the distant mountains of the Abruzzi-the +paint was not dry! + +She made several hysterical shouts of horror after committing this +little act, and then seating herself in an arm-chair, proceeded to take +a mental inventory of the articles of furniture in the studio. + +Mr. Shodd explained to Rocjean that he was a plain man: + +This was apparent at sight. + +That he was an uneducated man: + +This asserted itself to the eyes and ears. + +After which self-denial, he commenced 'pumping' the artist on various +subjects, assuming an ignorance of things which, to a casual observer, +made him appear like a fool; to a thoughtful person, a knave: the whole +done in order, perhaps, to learn about some trifle which a plain, +straightforward question would have elicited at once. Rocjean saw his +man, and led him a fearful gallop in order to thoroughly examine his +action and style. + +Spite of his commercial life, Mr. Shodd had found time to 'self-educate' +himself--he meant self-instruct--and having a retentive memory, and a +not always strict regard for truth, was looked up to by the +humble-ignorant as a very columbiad in argument, the only fault to be +found with which gun was, that when it was drawn from its quiescent +state into action, its effective force was comparatively nothing, one +half the charge escaping through the large touch-hole of untruth. +Discipline was entirely wanting in Mr. Shodd's composition. A man who +undertakes to be his own teacher rarely punishes his scholar, rarely +checks him with rules and practice, or accustoms him to order and +subordination. Mr. Shodd, therefore, was--undisciplined: a raw recruit, +not a soldier. + +Of course, his conversation was all contradictory. In one breath, on the +self-abnegation principle, he would say, 'I don't know any thing about +paintings;' in the next breath, his overweening egotism would make him +loudly proclaim: 'There never was but one painter in this world, and +his name is Hockskins; he lives in my town, and he knows more than any +of your 'old masters'! _I_ ought to know!' Or, '_I_ am an uneducated +man,' meaning uninstructed; immediately following it with the assertion: +'All teachers, scholars, and colleges are useless folly, and all +education is worthless, except self-education.' + +Unfortunately, self-education is too often only education of self! + +After carefully examining all Rocjean's pictures, he settled his +attention on a sunset view over the Campagna, leaving Mrs. Shodd to talk +with our artist. You have seen--all have seen--more than one Mrs. Shodd; +by nature and innate refinement, ladies; (the 'Little Dorrits' Dickens +shows to his beloved countrymen, to prove to them that not all nobility +is nobly born--a very mild lesson, which they refuse to regard;) Mrs. +Shodds who, married to Mr. Shodds, pass a life of silent protest against +brutal words and boorish actions. With but few opportunities to add +acquirable graces to natural ease and self-possession, there was that in +her kindly tone of voice and gentle manner winning the heart of a +gentleman to respect her as he would his mother. It was her mission to +atone for her husband's sins, and she fulfilled her duty; more could not +be asked of her, for his sins were many. The daughter was a copy of the +father, in crinoline; taking to affectation--which is vulgarity in its +most offensive form--as a duck takes to water. Even her dress was +marked, not by that neatness which shows refinement, but by precision, +which in dress is vulgar. One glance, and you saw the woman who in +another age would have thrown her glove to the tiger for her lover to +pick up! + +Among Rocjean's paintings was the portrait of a very beautiful woman, +made by him years before, when he first became an artist, and long +before he had been induced to abandon portrait-painting for landscape. +It was never shown to studio-visitors, and was placed with its face +against the wall, behind other paintings. In moving one of these to +place it in a good light on the easel, it fell with the others to the +floor, face uppermost; and while Rocjean, with a painting in his hands, +could not stoop at once to replace it, Miss Shodd's sharp eyes +discovered the beautiful face, and, her curiosity being excited, nothing +would do but it must be placed on the easel. Unwilling to refuse a +request from the daughter of a Patron of Art in perspective, Rocjean +complied, and, when the portrait was placed, glancing toward Mrs. Shodd, +had the satisfaction of reading in her eyes true admiration for the +startlingly lovely face looking out so womanly from the canvas. + +'Hm!' said Shodd the father, 'quite a fancy head.' + +'Oh! it is an exact portrait of Julia Ting; if she had sat for her +likeness, it couldn't have been better. I must have the painting, pa, +for Julia's sake. I _must_. It's a naughty word, isn't it, Mr. Rocjean? +but it is so expressive!' + +'Unfortunately, the portrait is not for sale; I placed it on the easel +only in order not to refuse your request.' + +Mr. Shodd saw the road open to an argument. He was in ecstasy; a long +argument--an argument full of churlish flings and boorish slurs, which +he fondly believed passed for polished satire and keen irony. He did not +know Rocjean; he never could know a man like him; he never could learn +the truth that confidence will overpower strength; only at last, when +through his hide and bristles entered the flashing steel, did he, +tottering backwards, open his eyes to the fact that he had found his +master--that, too, in a poor devil of an artist. + +The landscapes were all thrown aside; Shodd must have that portrait. His +daughter had set her heart on having it, he said, and could a gentleman +refuse a lady any thing? + +'It is on this very account I refuse to part with it,' answered Rocjean. + +It instantly penetrated Shodd's head that all this refusal was only +design on the part of the artist, to obtain a higher price for the work +than he could otherwise hope for; and so, with what he believed was a +master-stroke of policy, he at once ceased importuning the artist, and +shortly departed from the studio, preceding his wife with his daughter +on his arm, leaving the consoler, and by all means his best half, to +atone, by a few kind words at parting with the artist, for her husband's +sins. + +'And there,' thought Rocjean, as the door closed, 'goes 'a patron of +art'--and by no means the worst pattern. I hope he will meet with +Chapin, and buy an Orphan and an Enterprise statue; once in his house, +they will prove to every observant man the owner's taste.' + +Mr. Shodd, having a point to gain, went about it with elephantine grace +and dexterity. The portrait he had seen at Rocjean's studio he was +determined to have. He invited the artist to dine with him--the artist +sent his regrets; to accompany him, 'with the ladies,' in his carriage +to Tivoli--the artist politely declined the invitation; to a +_conversazione_, the invitation from Mrs. Shodd--a previous engagement +prevented the artist's acceptance. + +Mr. Shodd changed his tactics. He discovered at his banker's one day a +keen, communicative, wiry, shrewd, etc., etc., enterprising, etc., 'made +a hundred thousand dollars' sort of a little man, named Briggs, who was +traveling in order to travel, and grumble. Mr. Shodd 'came the ignorant +game' over this Briggs; pumped him, without obtaining any information, +and finally turned the conversation on artists, denouncing the entire +body as a set of the keenest swindlers, and citing the instance of one +he knew who had a painting which he believed it would be impossible for +any man to buy, simply because the artist, knowing that he (Shodd) +wished it, would not set a price on it, so as to have a very high one +offered (!) Mr. Briggs instantly was deeply interested. Here was a +chance for him to display before Shodd of Shoddsville his shrewdness, +keenness, and so forth. He volunteered to buy the painting. + +In Rome, an artist's studio may be his castle, or it may be an Exchange. +To have it the first, you must affix a notice to your studio-door +announcing that all entrance of visitors to the studio is forbidden +except on, say, 'Monday from twelve A.M. to three P.M. This is the +baronial manner. But the artist who is not wealthy or has not made a +name, must keep an Exchange, and receive all visitors who choose to +come, at almost any hours--model hours excepted. So Briggs, learning +from Shodd, by careful cross-questioning, the artist's name, address, +and a description of the painting, walked there at once, introduced +himself to Rocjean, shook his hand as if it were the handle of a pump +upon which he had serious intentions, and then began examining the +paintings. He looked at them all, but there was no portrait. He asked +Rocjean if he painted portraits; he found out that he did not. Finally, +he told the artist that he had heard some one say--he did not remember +who--that he had seen a very pretty head in his studio, and asked +Rocjean if he would show it to him. + +'You have seen Mr. Shodd lately, I should think?' said the artist, +looking into the eyes of Mr. Briggs. + +A suggestion of a clean brick-bat passed under a sheet of yellow +tissue-paper was observable in the hard cheeks of Mr. Briggs, that being +the final remnant of all appearance of modesty left in the sharp man, in +the shape of a blush. + +'Oh! yes; every body knows Shodd--man of great talent--generous,' said +Briggs. + +'Mr. Shodd may be very well known,' remarked Rocjean measuredly, 'but +the portrait he saw is not well known; he and his family are the only +ones who have seen it. Perhaps it may save you trouble to know that the +portrait I have several times refused to sell him will never be sold +while I live. The _common_ opinion that an artist, like a Jew, will sell +the old clo' from his back for money, is erroneous.' + +Mr. Briggs shortly after this left the studio, slightly at a discount, +and as if he had been measured, as he said to himself; and then and +there determined to say nothing to Shodd about his failing in his +mission to the savage artist. But Shodd found it all out in the first +conversation he made with Briggs; and very bitter were his feelings when +he learnt that a poor devil of an artist dared possess any thing he +could not buy, and moreover had a quiet moral strength which the vulgar +man feared. In his anger, Shodd, with his disregard for truth, commenced +a fearful series of attacks against the artist, regaling every one he +dared to with the coarsest slanders, in the vilest language, against the +painter's character. A very few days sufficed to circulate them, so that +they reached Rocjean's ears; a very few minutes passed before the artist +presented himself to the eyes of Shodd, and, fortunately finding him +alone, told him in four words, 'You are a slanderer;' mentioning to him, +beside, that if he ever uttered another slander against his name, he +should compel him to give him instantaneous satisfaction, and that, as +an American, Shodd knew what that meant. + +It is needless to say that a liar and slanderer is a coward; +consequently Mr. Shodd, with the consequences before his eyes, never +again alluded to Rocjean, and shortly left the city for Naples, to +bestow the light of his countenance there in his great character of Art +Patron. + + * * * * * + +'It is a heart-touching face,' said Caper, as one morning, while hauling +over his paintings, Rocjean brought the portrait to light which the +cunning Shodd had so longed to possess for cupidity's sake. + +'I should feel as if I had thrown Psyche to the Gnomes to be torn to +pieces, if I had given such a face to Shodd. If I had sold it to him, I +should have been degraded; for the women loved by man should be kept +sacred in memory. She was a girl I knew in Prague, and, I think, with +six or eight exceptions, the loveliest one I ever met. Some night, at +sunset, I shall walk over the old bridge, and meet her as we parted; +_apropos_ of which meeting, I once wrote some words. Hand me that +portfolio, will you? Thank you. Oh! yes; here they are. Now, read them, +Caper; out with them! + + +ANEZKA OD PRAHA. + + Years, weary years, since on the Moldau bridge, + By the five stars and cross of Nepomuk, + I kissed the scarlet sunset from her lips: + Anezka, fair Bohemian, thou wert there! + + Dark waves beneath the bridge were running fast, + In haste to bathe the shining rocks, whence rose + Tier over tier, the gloaming domes and spires, + Turrets and minarets of the Holy City, + Its crown the Hradschin of Bohemia's kings. + O'er Wysscherad we saw the great stars shine; + We felt the night-wind on the rushing stream; + We drank the air as if 'twere Melnick wine, + And every draught whirled us still nearer Nebe: + Anezka, fair Bohemian, thou wert there! + + Why ever gleam thy black eyes sadly on me? + Why ever rings thy sweet voice in my ear? + Why looks thy pale face from the drifting foam-- + Dashed by the wild sea on this distant shore-- + Or from the white clouds does it beckon me? + + My own heart answers: On the Moldau bridge, + Anezka, we will meet to part no more. + + + + +ANTHONY TROLLOPE ON AMERICA. + + +Mr. Anthony Trollope's work entitled _North-America_ has been +republished in this country, and curiosity has at length been satisfied. +Great as has been this curiosity among his friends, it can not, however, +be said to have been wide-spread, inasmuch as up to the appearance of +this book of travels, comparatively few were aware of the presence of +Mr. Trollope in this country. When Charles Dickens visited America, our +people testified their admiration of his homely genius by going mad, +receiving him with frantic acclamations of delight, dining him, and +suppering him, and going through the 'pump-handle movement' with him. +Mr. Dickens was, in consequence, intensely bored by this attestation of +popular idolatry so peculiar to the United States, and looked upon us as +officious, absurd, and disgusting. Officious we were, and absurd enough, +surely, but far from being disgusting. He ought hardly to beget disgust +whose youth and inexperience leads him to extravagance in his kindly +demonstrations toward genius. However, Mr. Dickens went home rather more +impressed by our faults, which he had had every opportunity of +inspecting, than by our virtues, which possessed fewer salient features +to his humorous eye. Two books--_American Notes_ and _Martin +Chuzzlewit_--were the product of his tour through America. Thereupon, +the American people grew very indignant. Their Dickens-love, in +proportion to its intensity, turned to Dickens-hate, and ingratitude was +considered to be synonymous with the name of this novelist. We gave him +every chance to see our follies, and we snubbed his cherished and chief +object in visiting America, concerning a copyright. There is little +wonder, then, that Dickens, an Englishman and a caricaturist, should +have painted us in the colors that he did. There is scarcely less wonder +that Americans, at that time, all in the white-heat of enthusiasm, +should have waxed angry at Dickens' cold return to so much warmth. But, +reading these books in the light of 1862, there are few of us who do not +smile at the rage of our elders. We see an uproariously funny +extravaganza in _Martin Chuzzlewit_, which we can well afford to laugh +at, having grown thicker-skinned, and wonder what there is to be found +in the _Notes_ so very abominable to an American. Mr. Dickens was a +humorist, not a statesman or philosopher, therefore he wrote of us as a +disappointed humorist would have been tempted to write. + +It is not likely that Mr. Trollope's advent in this country would have +given rise to any remark or excitement, his novels, clever though they +be, not having taken hold of the people's heart as did those of Dickens. +He came among us quietly; the newspapers gave him no flourish of +trumpets; he traveled about unknown; hence it was, that few knew a new +book was to be written upon America by one bearing a name not +over-popular thirty years ago. Curiosity was confined to the friends and +acquaintances of Mr. Trollope, who were naturally not a little anxious +that he should conscientiously write such a book as would remove the +existing prejudice to the name of Trollope, and render him personally as +popular as his novels. For there are, we believe, few intelligent +Americans (and Mr. Trollope is good enough to say that we of the North +are all intelligent) who are not ready to '_faire l'aimable_' to the +kindly, genial author of _North-America_. It is not being rash to state +that Mr. Trollope, in his last book, has not disappointed his warmest +personal friends in this country, and this is saying much, when it is +considered that many of them are radically opposed to him in many of +his opinions, and most of them hold very different views from him in +regard to the present war. They are not disappointed, because Mr. +Trollope has _labored_ to be impartial in his criticisms. He has, at +least, _endeavored_ to lay aside his English prejudices and judge us in +a spirit of truth and good-fellowship. Mr. Trollope inaugurated a new +era in British book-making upon America, when he wrote: 'If I could in +any small degree add to the good feeling which should exist between two +nations which ought to love each other so well, and which do hang upon +each other so constantly, I should think that I had cause to be proud of +my work.' In saying this much, Mr. Trollope has said what others of his +ilk--Bulwer, Thackeray, and Dickens--would _not_ have said, and he may +well be proud, or, at least, he can afford _not_ to be proud, of a +superior honesty and frankness. He has won for himself kind thoughts on +this side of the Atlantic, and were Americans convinced that the body +English were imbued with the spirit of Mr. Trollope, there would be +little left of the resuscitated 'soreness.' + +In his introduction, Mr. Trollope frankly acknowledges that 'it is very +hard to write about any country a book that does not represent the +country described in a more or less ridiculous point of view.' He +confesses that he is not a philosophico-political or +politico-statistical or a statistico-scientific writer, and hence, +'ridicule and censure run glibly from the pen, and form themselves into +sharp paragraphs, which are pleasant to the reader. Whereas, eulogy is +commonly dull, and too frequently sounds as though it were false.' We +agree with him, that 'there is much difficulty in expressing a verdict +which is intended to be favorable, but which, though favorable, shall +not be falsely eulogistic, and though true, not offensive.' Mr. Trollope +has not been offensive either in his praise or dispraise; and when we +look upon him in the light in which he paints himself--that of an +English novelist--he has, at least, done his best by us. We could not +expect from him such a book as Emerson wrote on _English Traits_, or +such an one as Thomas Buckle would have written had death not staid his +great work of _Civilization_. Nor could we look to him for that which +John Stuart Mill--the English De Tocqueville--alone can give. For much +that we expected we have received, for that which is wanting we shall +now find fault, but good-naturedly, we hope. + +Our first ground of complaint against Mr. Trollope's _North-America_, is +its extreme verbosity. Had it been condensed to one half, or at least +one third of its present size, the spirit of the book had been less +weakened, and the taste of the public better satisfied. The question +naturally arises in an inquiring mind, if the author could make so much +out of a six months' tour through the Northern States, what would the +consequences have been had he remained a year, and visited Dixie's land +as well? The conclusions logically arrived at are, to say the least, +very unfavorable to weak-eyed persons who are condemned to read the +cheap American edition. Life is too short, and books are too numerous, +to allow of repetition; and at no time is Mr. Trollope so guilty in this +respect as when he dilates upon those worthies, Mason and Slidell, in +connection with the Trent affair. It was very natural, especially as +England has come off first-best in this matter, that Mr. Trollope should +have made a feature of the Trent in reporting the state of the American +pulse thereon. One reference to the controversy was desirable, two +endurable, but the third return to the charge is likely to meet with +impatient exclamations from the reader, who heartily sympathizes with +the author when he says: 'And now, I trust, I may finish my book without +again naming Messrs. Slidell and Mason.' + +It certainly was rash to rave as we did on this subject, but it was +quite natural, when our jurists, (even the Hon. Caleb Cushing) who were +supposed to know their business, assured us that we had right on our +side. It was extremely ridiculous to put Captain Wilkes upon a pedestal +a little lower than Bunker-Hill monument, and present him with a hero's +sword for doing what was then considered _only_ his duty. But it must be +remembered that at that time the mere performance of duty by a public +officer was so extraordinary a phenomenon that loyal people were brought +to believe it merited especial recognition. Our Government, and not the +people, were to blame. Had the speech of Charles Sumner, delivered on +his 'field-day,' been the verdict of the Washington Cabinet _previous_ +to the reception of England's expostulations, the position taken by +America on this subject would have been highly dignified and honorable. +As it is, we stand with feathers ruffled and torn. But if, as we +suppose, the Trent imbroglio leads to a purification of maritime law, +not only America, but the entire commercial world will be greatly +indebted to the super-patriotism of Captain Wilkes. + +'The charming women of Boston' are inclined to quarrel with their friend +Mr. Trollope, for ridiculing their powers of argumentation _apropos_ to +Captain Wilkes, for Mr. Trollope must confess they knew quite as much +about what they were talking as the lawyers by whom they were +instructed. They have had more than their proper share of revenge, +however, meted out for them by the reviewer of the London _Critic_, who +writes as follows: + + 'Mr. Trollope was in Boston when the first news about the Trent + arrived. Of course, every body was full of the subject at once--Mr. + Trollope, we presume, not excluded--albeit he is rather sarcastic + upon the young ladies who began immediately to chatter about it. + 'Wheaton is quite clear about it,' said one young girl to me. It + was the first I had heard of Wheaton, and so far was obliged to + knock under.' Yet Mr. Trollope, knowing very little more of Wheaton + than he did before, and obviously nothing of the great authorities + on maritime law, inflicts upon his readers page after page of + argument upon the Trent affair, not half so delightful as the + pretty babble of the ball-room belle. With all due respect to Mr. + Trollope, and his attractions, we are quite sure that we would much + sooner get our international law from the lips of the fair + Bostonian than from _his_.' + +After such a champion as this, could the fair Bostonians have the heart +to assail Mr. Trollope? + +Mr. Trollope treats of our civil war at great length; in fact, the +reverberations of himself on this matter are quite as objectionable as +those in the Trent affair. But it is his treatment of this subject that +must ever be a source of regret to the earnest thinkers who are +gradually becoming the masters of our Government's policy, who +constitute the bone and muscle of the land, the rank and file of the +army, and who are changing the original character of the war into that +of a holy crusade. It is to be deplored, because Mr. Trollope's book +will no doubt influence English opinion, to a certain extent, and +therefore militate against us, and we already know how his mistaken +opinions have been seized upon by pro-slavery journals in this country +as a _bonne bouche_ which they rarely obtain from so respectable a +source; the more palatable to them, coming from that nationality which +we have always been taught to believe was more abolition in its creed +than William Lloyd Garrison himself, and from whose people we have +received most of our lectures on the sin of slavery. It is sad that so +fine a nature as that of Mr. Trollope should not feel +conscience-stricken in believing that 'to mix up the question of general +abolition with this war must be the work of a man too ignorant to +understand the real subject of the war, or too false to his country to +regard it.' Yet it is strange that these 'too ignorant' or 'too false' +men are the very ones that Mr. Trollope holds up to admiration, and +declares that any nation might be proud to claim their genius. +Longfellow and Lowell, Emerson and Motley, to whom we could add almost +all the well-known thinkers of the country, men after his own heart in +most things, belong to this 'ignorant' or 'false' sect. Is it their one +madness? That is a strange madness which besets our _greatest_ men and +women; a marvelous anomaly surely. Yet there must be something +sympathetic in abolitionism to Mr. Trollope, for he prefers Boston, the +centre of this ignorance, to all other American cities, and finds his +friends for the most part among these false ones, by which we are to +conclude that Mr. Trollope is by nature an abolitionist, but that +circumstances have been unfavorable to his proper development. And these +circumstances we ascribe to a hasty and superficial visit to the British +West-India colonies. + +It is well known that in his entertaining book on travels in the +West-Indies and Spanish Main, Mr. Trollope undertakes to prove that +emancipation has both ruined the commercial prosperity of the British +islands and degraded the free blacks to a level with the idle brute. Mr. +Trollope is still firm in this opinion, notwithstanding the statistics +of the Blue Book, which prove that these colonies never were in so +flourishing a condition as at present. We, in America, have also had the +same fact demonstrated by figures, in that very plainly written book +called the _Ordeal of Free Labor_. Mr. Trollope, no doubt, saw some very +lazy negroes, wallowing in dirt, and living only for the day, but later +developments have proved that his investigations could have been simply +those of a dilettante. It is highly probable that the planters who have +been shorn of their riches by the edict of Emancipation, should paint +the present condition of the blacks in any thing but rose-colors, and +we, of course, believe that Mr. Trollope _believes_ what he has written. +He is none the less mistaken, if we are to pin our faith to the Blue +Book, which we are told never lies. And yet, believing that emancipation +has made a greater brute than ever of the negro, Mr. Trollope rejoices +in the course which has been pursued by the home government. If both +white man and black man are worse off than they were before, what good +could have been derived from the reform, and by what right ought he to +rejoice? Mr. Trollope claims to be an anti-slavery man, but we must +confess that to our way of arguing, the ground he stands upon in this +matter is any thing but _terra firma_. Mr. Trollope was probably +thinking of those dirty West-India negroes when he made the following +comments upon a lecture delivered by Wendell Phillips: + + 'I have sometimes thought that there is no being so venomous, so + bloodthirsty, as a professed philanthropist; and that when the + philanthropist's ardor lies negro-ward, it then assumes the deepest + die of venom and bloodthirstiness. There are four millions of + slaves in the Southern States, none of whom have any capacity for + self-maintenance or self-control. Four millions of slaves, with the + necessities of children, with the passions of men, and the + ignorance of savages! And Mr. Phillips would emancipate these at a + blow; would, were it possible for him to do so, set them loose upon + the soil to tear their masters, destroy each other, and make such a + hell upon earth as has never even yet come from the uncontrolled + passions and unsatisfied wants of men.' + +Mr. Trollope should have thought twice before he wrote thus of the +American negro. Were he a competent authority on this subject, his +opinion might be worth something; but as he never traveled in the South, +and as his knowledge of the negro is limited to a surface acquaintance +with the West-Indies, we maintain that Mr. Trollope has not only been +unjust, but ungenerous. Four millions of slaves, none of whom have any +capacity for self-maintenance or self-control! Whom are we to believe? +Mr. Trollope, who has never been on a Southern plantation, or Frederick +Law Olmsted? Mr. Pierce, who has been superintendent of the contrabands +at Fortress Monroe and at Hilton Head, officers attached to Burnside's +Division, and last and best, General David Hunter, an officer of the +regular army, who went to South-Carolina with anti-abolition +antecedents? All honor to General Hunter, who, unlike many others, has +not shut his eyes upon facts, and, like a rational being, has yielded to +the logic of events. It is strange that these authorities, all of whom +possess the confidence of the Government, should disagree with Mr. +Trollope. _None_ self-maintaining? Robert Small is a pure negro. Is he +not more than self-maintaining? Has he not done more for the Federal +Government than any white man of the Gulf States? Tillman is a negro; +the best pilots of the South are negroes: are _they_ not +self-maintaining? Kansas has welcomed thousands of fugitive slaves to +her hospitable doors, not as paupers, but as laborers, who have taken +the place of those white men who have gone to fight the battles which +they also should be allowed to take part in. The women have been gladly +accepted as house-servants. Does not this look like self-maintenance? +Would negroes be employed in the army if they were as Mr. Trollope +pictures them? He confesses that without these four millions of slaves +the South would be a wilderness, therefore they _do_ work as slaves to +the music of the slave-drivers' whip. How very odd, that the moment men +and women (for Mr. Trollope does acknowledge them to be such) _own +themselves_, and are paid for the sweat of their brow, they should +forget the trades by which they have enriched the South, and become +incapable of maintaining themselves--they who have maintained three +hundred and fifty thousand insolent slave-owners! Given whip-lashes and +the incubus of a white family, the slave _will_ work; given freedom and +wages, the negro _won't_ work. Was there ever stated a more palpable +fallacy? Is it necessary to declare further that the Hilton Head +experiment is a success, although the negroes, wanting in slave-drivers +and in their musical instruments, began their planting very late in the +season? Is it necessary to give Mr. Trollope one of many figures, and +prove that in the British West-India colonies free labor has exported +two hundred and sixty-five millions pounds of sugar annually, whereas +slave labor only exported one hundred and eighty-seven millions three +hundred thousand? And this in a climate where, unlike even the Southern +States of North-America, there is every inducement to indolence. + +Four millions of slaves, _none_ of whom are capable of self-control, who +possess the necessities of children, the passions of men, and the +ignorance of savages! We really have thought that the many thousands of +these four millions who have come under the Federal jurisdiction, +exercised considerable self-control, when it is remembered that in some +localities they have been left entire masters of themselves, have in +other instances labored months for the Government under promise of pay, +and have had that pay prove a delusion. Certainly it is fair to judge of +a whole by a part. Given a bone, Professor Agassiz can draw the animal +of which the bone forms a part. Given many thousands of negroes, we +should be able to judge somewhat of four millions. Had Mr. Trollope seen +the thousands of octoroons and quadroons enslaved in the South by their +_own fathers_, it would have been more just in him to have attributed a +want of _self-control_ to the _masters_ of these four millions. We do +not know what Mr. Trollope means by 'the necessities of children. +Children need to be sheltered, fed, and clothed, and so do the negroes, +but here the resemblance ends; for whereas children can not take care of +themselves, the negro _can_, provided there is any opportunity to work. +It is scarcely to be doubted that temporary distress must arise among +fugitives in localities where labor is not plenty; but does this +establish the black man's incapacity? Revolutions, especially those +which are internal, generally bring in their train distress to laborers. +Then we are told that the slaves are endowed with the passions of men; +and very glad are we to know this, for, as a love of liberty and a +willingness to sacrifice all things for freedom, is one of the loftiest +passions in men, were he devoid of this passion, we should look with +much less confidence to assistance from the negro in this war of freedom +_versus_ slavery, than we do at present. In stating that the slaves are +as ignorant as savages, Mr. Trollope pays an exceedingly poor compliment +to the Southern whites, as it would naturally be supposed that constant +contact with a superior race would have civilized the negro to a +_certain_ extent, especially as he is known to be wonderfully imitative. +And such is the case; at least the writer of these lines, who has been +born and bred in a slave State, thinks so. As a whole, they compare very +favorably with the 'poor white trash,' and individually they are vastly +superior to this 'trash.' It is true, that they can not read or write, +not from want of aptitude or desire, as the teachers among the +contrabands write that their desire to read amounts to a passion, in +many cases, even among the hoary-headed, but because the teaching of a +slave to read or write was, in the good old times before the war, +regarded and punished as a criminal offense. What a pity it is that we +can not go back to the Union _as it was!_ In this ignorance of the +rudiments of learning, the negroes are not unlike a large percentage of +the populations of Great Britain and Ireland. + +'And Mr. Phillips would let these ignorant savages loose upon the soil +to tear their masters, destroy each other, and make such a hell upon +earth as has never even yet come from the uncontrolled passions and +unsatisfied wants of men!' If Mr. Trollope were read in the history of +emancipation, he would know that there has not been an instance of 'such +a hell upon earth' as he describes. The American negro is a singularly +docile, affectionate, and good-natured creature, not at all given to +destroying his kind or tearing his master, and the least inclined to do +these things at a time when there is no necessity for them. A slave is +likely to kill his master to gain his freedom, but he is not fond enough +of murder to kill him when no object is to be gained except a halter. +The record so far proves that the masters have shot down their slaves +rather than have them fall into the hands of the Union troops. Even +granting Mr. Trollope's theory of the negro disposition, no edict of +emancipation could produce such an effect as he predicts, to the +_masters_, at least. They, in revenge, might shoot down their slaves, +but, unfortunately, the victims would be unable to defend themselves, +from the fact that all arms are sedulously kept from them. The slaves +would run away in greater numbers than they do at present, would give us +valuable information of the enemy, and would swell our ranks as +soldiers, if permitted, and kill their rebel masters in the legal and +honorable way of war. It is likely that Mr. Trollope, holding the black +man in so little estimation, would doubt his abilities in this capacity. +Fortunately for us, we can quote as evidence in our favor from General +Hunter's late letter to Congress, which, for sagacity and elegant +sarcasm, is unrivaled among American state papers. General Hunter, after +stating that the 'loyal slaves, unlike their fugitive masters, welcome +him, aid him, and supply him with food, labor, and information, working +with remarkable industry,' concludes by stating that 'the experiment of +arming the blacks, so far as I have made it, has been a complete and +even marvelous success. They are sober, docile, attentive, and +enthusiastic, _displaying great natural capacity for acquiring the +duties of the soldier_. They are eager beyond all things to take the +field and be led into action, and it is the _unanimous opinion_ of the +officers who have had charge of them, that in the peculiarities of this +climate and country, they will prove invaluable auxiliaries, fully equal +to the similar regiments so long and successfully used by the British +authorities in the West-India Islands. In conclusion, I would say that +it is my hope, there appearing no possibility of other reinforcements, +owing to the exigencies of the campaign on the peninsula, to have +organized by the end of next fall, and to be able to present to the +Government, from forty-eight to fifty thousand of these hardy and +devoted soldiers.' + +Mr. Trollope declares that without the slaves the South would be a +wilderness; he also says that the North is justified in the present war +against the South, and although he doubts our ability to attain our ends +in this war, he would be very glad if we were victorious. If these are +his opinions, and if further, he considers slavery to be the cause of +the war, then why in the name of common-sense does he not advocate that +which would bring about our lasting success? He expresses his +satisfaction at the probability of emancipation in Missouri, Kentucky, +and Virginia, and yet rather than that abolition should triumph +universally, he would have the Gulf States go off by themselves and sink +into worse than South-American insignificance, a curse to themselves +from the very reason of slavery. This, to our way of thinking, is vastly +more cruel to the South than even the 'hell upon earth,' which, +supposing it were possible, emancipation would create. A massacre could +affect but one generation: such a state of things as Mr. Trollope +expects to see would poison numberless generations. The Northern brain +is gradually ridding itself of mental fog, begotten by Southern +influences, and Mr. Trollope will not live to see the Gulf States sink +into a moral Dismal Swamp. The day is not far distant when a God-fearing +and justice-loving people will give these States their choice between +Emancipation and death in their 'last ditch,' which we suppose to be the +Gulf of Mexico. Repulses before Richmond only hasten this end. 'But +Congress can not do this,' says Mr. Trollope. Has martial law no virtue? +We object to the title, 'An Apology for the War,' which Mr. Trollope has +given to one of his chapters; and with the best of motives, he takes +great pains to prove to the English public how we of the North could not +but fight the South, however losing a game it might be. No true American +need beg pardon of Europe for this war, which is the only apology we can +make to civilization for slavery. Mr. Trollope states the worn-out cant +that the secessionists of the South have been aided and abetted by the +fanatical abolitionism of the North. Of course they have: had there been +no slavery, there would have been no abolitionists, and therefore no +secessionists. Wherever there is a wrong, there are always persons +fanatical enough to cry out against that wrong. In time, the few +fanatics become the majority, and conquer the wrong, to the infinite +disgust of the easy-going present, but to the gratitude of a better +future. The Abolitionists gave birth to the Republican party, and of +course the triumph of the Republican party was the father to secession; +but we see no reason to mourn that it was so; rather do we thank God +that the struggle has come in our day. We can not sympathize with Mr. +Trollope when he says of the Bell and Everett party: 'Their express +theory was this: that the question of slavery should not be touched. +Their purpose was to crush agitation, and restore harmony by an +impartial balance between the North and South: a fine purpose--the +finest of all purposes, had it been practicable.' We suppose by this, +that Mr. Trollope wishes such a state of things had been practicable. +The impartial balance means the Crittenden Compromise, whose +impartiality the North fails to see in any other light than a fond +leaning to the South, giving it all territory South of a certain +latitude, a _latitude_ that never was intended by the Constitution. It +seems to us that there can be no impartial balance between freedom and +slavery. Every jury must be partial to the right, or they sin before +God. + +Mr. Trollope tells us that 'the South is seceding from the North because +the two are not homogeneous. They have different instincts, different +appetites, different morals, and a different culture. It is well for one +man to say that slavery has caused the separation, and for another to +say that slavery has not caused it. Each in so saying speaks the truth. +Slavery has caused it, seeing that slavery is the great point on which +the two have agreed to differ. But slavery has not caused it, seeing +that other points of difference are to be found In every circumstance +and feature of the two people. The North and the South must ever be +dissimilar. In the North, labor will always be honorable, and because +honorable, successful. In the South, labor has ever been servile--at +least in some sense--and therefore dishonorable; and because +dishonorable, has not, to itself, been successful.' Is not this arguing +in a circle? The North is dissimilar to the South. Why? Because labor is +honorable in the former, and dishonorable, because of its servility, in +the latter. The servility removed, in what are the two dissimilar? One +third of the Southern whites are related by marriage to the North; a +second third are Northerners, and it is this last third that are most +violent in their acts against and hatred of the North. They were born +with our instincts and appetites, educated in the same morals, and +received the same culture; and these men are no worse than some of their +brothers who, though they have not emigrated to the South, have yet +fattened upon cotton. The parents of Jefferson Davis belonged to +Connecticut; Slidell is a New-Yorker; Benjamin is a Northerner; General +Lovell is a disgrace to Massachusetts; so, too, is Albert Pike. It is +utter nonsense to say that we are two people. Two interests have been at +work--free labor and slave labor; and when the former triumphs, there +will be no more straws split about two people, nor will the refrain of +agriculture _versus_ manufacture be sung. The South, especially +Virginia, has untold wealth to be drained from her great water-power. +New-England will not be alone in manufacturing, nor Pennsylvania in +mining. + +We think that Mr. Trollope fails to appreciate principle when he likens +the conflict between the two sections of our country to a quarrel +between Mr. and Mrs. Jones, in which a mutual friend (England) is, from +the very nature of the case, obliged to maintain neutrality, leaving the +matter to the tender care of Sir Creswell. There never yet existed a +mutual friend who, however little he interfered with a matrimonial +difference, did not, in sympathy and moral support, take violent sides +with _one_ of the combatants; and Mr. Trollope would be first in taking +up the cudgels against private wrong. The North has never wished for +physical aid from England; but does Mr. Trollope remember what Mrs. +Browning has so nobly and humanely written? 'Non-intervention in the +affairs of neighboring States is a high political virtue; but +non-intervention does not mean passing by on the other side when your +neighbor falls among thieves, or Phariseeism would recover it from +Christianity.' England, the greatest of actual nations, had a part to +act in our war, and that part a noble one. Not the part of physical +intervention for the benefit of Lancashire and of a confederacy founded +upon slavery, which both Earl Russell and Lord Palmerston inform the +world will not take place 'at present.' Not the part of hypercriticism +and misconstruction of Northern 'Orders,' and affectionate blindness to +Southern atrocities. But such a part as was worthy of the nation, one of +whose greatest glories is that it gave birth to a Clarkson, a Sharpe, +and a Wilberforce. And England has much to answer for, in that she has +been found wanting, not in the cause of the North, but in the cause of +humanity. Had she not always told us that we were criminals of the +deepest dye not to do what she had done in the West-Indies, had she not +always held out to the world the beacon-light of emancipation, there +could be little censure cast upon the British ermine; but having laid +claim to so white and moral a robe, she subjects herself to the very +proper indignation of the anti-slavery party which now governs the +North. + +Mr. Trollope confesses that British sympathy is with the South, and +further writes: 'It seems to me that some of us never tire in abusing +the Americans and calling them names, for having allowed themselves to +be driven into this civil war. We tell them that they are fools and +idiots; we speak of their doings as though there had been some plain +course by which the war might have been avoided; and we throw it in +their teeth that they have no capability for war,' etc., etc. Contact +with the English abroad sent us home convinced of English animosity, and +this was before the Trent affair. A literary woman writes to America: +'There is only one person to whom I can talk freely upon the affairs of +your country. Here in England, they say I have lived so long _in Italy +that I have become an American_.' We have had nothing but abuse from the +English press always, excepting a few of the liberal journals. Mill and +Bright and Cobden alone have been prominent in their expression of +good-will to the North. And this is Abolition England! History will +record, that at the time when America was convulsed by the inevitable +struggle between Freedom and Slavery, England, actuated by selfish +motives, withheld that moral support and righteous counsel which would +have deprived the South of much aid and comfort, brought the war to a +speedier conclusion, gained the grateful confidence of the anti-slavery +North, and immeasurably aided the abolition of human slavery. + +It may be said that we of the North have no intention of touching the +'institution,' and therefore England can not sympathize with us. +Whatever the theory of the administration at Washington may have been, +he is insane as well as blind who does not see what is its practical +tendency. In the same length of time, this tendency would have been much +farther on the road to right had the strong arm of England wielded the +moral power which should belong to it. Mr. Trollope says: 'The complaint +of Americans is, that they have received no sympathy from England; but +it seems to me that a great nation should not require an expression of +sympathy during its struggle. Sympathy is for the weak, not for the +strong. When I hear two powerful men contending together in argument, I +do not sympathize with him who has the best of it; but I watch the +precision of his logic, and acknowledge the effects of his rhetoric. +There has been a whining weakness in the complaints made by Americans +against England, which has done more to lower them, as a people, in my +judgment, than any other part of their conduct during the present +crisis.' It is true that at the beginning of this war the North _did_ +show a whining weakness for English approbation, of which it is +sincerely to be hoped we have been thoroughly cured. We paid our +mother-land too high a compliment--we gave her credit for virtues which +she does not possess--and the disappointment incurred thereby has been +bitter in the extreme. We were not aware, however, that a sincere desire +for sympathy was an American peculiarity. We have long labored under the +delusion that the English, even, were very indignant with Brother +Jonathan during the Crimean war, when he failed to furnish the quota of +sympathy which our cousins considered was their due, but which we could +not give to a debauched 'sick man' whom, for the good of civilization, +we wished out of the world as quickly as possible. But England was +'strong;' why should she have desired sympathy? For, according to Mr. +Trollope's creed, the weak alone ought to receive sympathy. It seems to +be a matter entirely independent of right and wrong with Mr. Trollope. +It is sufficient for a man to prove his case to be '_strong_,' for Mr. +Trollope to side with his opponent. Demonstrate your weakness, whether +it be physical, moral, or mental, and Mr. Trollope will fight your +battles for you. On this principle--which, we are told, is English--the +exiled princes of Italy, especially the Neapolitan-Bourbon, the Pope, +Austria, and of course the Southern confederacy, should find their +warmest sympathizers among true Britons, and perhaps they do; but Mr. +Trollope, in spite of his theory, is not one of them. + +The emancipationist should _not_ look to England for aid or comfort, but +it will be none the worse for England that she has been false to her +traditions. 'I confess,' wrote Mrs. Browning--dead now a year--'that I +dream of the day when an English statesman shall arise with a heart too +large for England, having courage, in the face of his countrymen, to +assert of some suggested policy: 'This is good for your trade, this is +necessary for your domination; but it will vex a people hard by, it will +hurt a people farther off, it will profit nothing to the general +humanity; therefore, away with it! it is not for you or for me.'' The +justice of the poet yet reigns in heaven only; and dare we dream--we +who, sick at heart, are weighed down by the craft and dishonesty of our +public men--of the possibility of such a golden age? + +On the subject of religion as well, we are much at variance with Mr. +Trollope. Of course, it is to be expected that one who says, 'I love the +name of State and Church, and believe that much of our English +well-being has depended on it; _I have made up my mind to think that +union good, and am not to be turned away from that conviction_;' it is +to be expected, we repeat, that such an one should consider religion in +the States 'rowdy.' Surely, we will not quarrel with Mr. Trollope for +this opinion, however much we may regret it; as we consider it the glory +of this country, that while we claim for our moral foundation a fervent +belief in GOD and an abiding faith in the necessity of +religion, our government pays no premium to hypocrisy by having fastened +to its shirts one creed above all other creeds, made thereby more +respectable and more fashionable. 'It is a part of their system,' Mr. +Trollope continues, 'that religion shall be perfectly free, and that no +man shall be in any way constrained in that matter,' (and he sees +nothing to thank God for in this system of ours!) 'consequently, the +question of a man's religion is regarded in a free-and-easy manner.' +That which we have gladly dignified by the name of religious toleration, +(not yet half as broad as it should and will be,) Mr. Trollope degrades +by the epithet of 'free-and-easy.' This would better apply were ours the +toleration of indifference, instead of being a toleration founded upon +the unshaken belief that God has endowed every human being with a +conscience whose sufficiency unto itself, in matters of religious faith, +we have no right to question. And we are convinced that this experiment, +with which we started, has been good for our growth of mind and soul, as +well as for our growth as a nation. Even Mr. Trollope qualifies our +'rowdyism,' by saying that 'the nation is religious in its tendencies, +and prone to acknowledge the goodness of God in all things.' + +And now we have done with fault-finding. For all that we hereafter quote +from Mr. Trollope's book, we at once express our thanks and _sympathy_. +He is '_strong_,' but he is also human, and likes sympathy. + +More than true, if such a thing could be, is Mr. Trollope's comments +upon American politicians. 'The corruption of the venal politicians of +the nation stinks aloud in the nostrils of all men. It behoves the +country to look to this. It is time now that she should do so. The +people of the nation are educated and clever. The women are bright and +beautiful. Her charity is profuse; her philanthropy is eager and true; +her national ambition is noble and honest--honest in the cause of +civilization. But she has soiled herself with political corruption, and +has disgraced the cause of republican government by those whom she has +placed in her high places. Let her look to it NOW. She is nobly +ambitious of reputation throughout the earth; she desires to be called +good as well as great; to be regarded not only as powerful, but also as +beneficent She is creating an army; she is forging cannon, and preparing +to build impregnable ships of war. But all these will fail to satisfy +her pride, unless she can cleanse herself from that corruption by which +her political democracy has debased itself. A politician should be a man +worthy of all honor, in that he loves his country; and not one worthy of +contempt, in that he robs his country.' Can we plead other than guilty, +when even now a Senator of the United States stands convicted of a +miserable betrayal of his office? Will America heed the voice of Europe, +as well as of her best friends at home, before it is too late? Again +writes Mr. Trollope: ''It is better to have little governors than great +governors,' an American said to me once. 'It is our glory that we know +how to live without having great men over us to rule us.' That glory, if +ever it were a glory, has come to an end. It seems to me that all these +troubles have come upon the States because they have not placed high men +in high places.' Is there a thinking American who denies the truth of +this? And of our code of honesty--that for which Englishmen are most to +be commended--what is truly said of us? 'It is not by foreign voices, by +English newspapers, or in French pamphlets, that the corruption of +American politicians has been exposed, but by American voices and by the +American press. It is to be heard on every side. Ministers of the +Cabinet, Senators, Representatives, State Legislatures, officers of the +army, officials of the navy, contractors of every grade--all who are +presumed to touch, or to have the power of touching, public money, are +thus accused.... The leaders of the rebellion are hated in the North. +The names of Jefferson Davis, Cobb, Toombs, and Floyd, are mentioned +with execration by the very children. This has sprung from a true and +noble feeling; from a patriotic love of national greatness, and a hatred +of those who, for small party purposes, have been willing to lessen the +name of the United States. But, in addition to this, the names of those +also should be execrated who have robbed their country when pretending +to serve it; who have taken its wages in the days of its great struggle, +and at the same time have filched from its coffers; who have undertaken +the task of steering the ship through the storm, in order that their +hands might be deep in the meal-tub and the bread-basket, and that they +might stuff their own sacks with the ship's provisions. These are the +men who must be loathed by the nation--whose fate must be held up as a +warning to others--before good can come.' How long are the American +people to allow this pool of iniquity to stagnate, and sap the vitals of +the nation? How long, O Lord! how long? + +On the subject of education, Mr. Trollope--though indulging in a little +pleasantry on young girls who analyze Milton--does us full justice. 'The +one matter in which, as far as my judgment goes, the people of the +United States have excelled us Englishmen, so as to justify them in +taking to themselves praise which we can not take to ourselves or refuse +to them, is the matter of education.... The coachman who drives you, the +man who mends your window, the boy who brings home your purchases, the +girl who stitches your wife's dress--they all carry with them sure signs +of education, and show it in every word they utter.' But much as Mr. +Trollope admires our system of public schools, he does not see much to +extol in the at least Western way of rearing children. 'I must protest +that American babies are an unhappy race. They eat and drink just as +they please; they are never punished; they are never banished, snubbed, +and kept in the background, as children are kept with us; and yet they +are wretched and uncomfortable. My heart has bled for them as I have +heard them squalling, by the hour together, in agonies of discontent and +dyspepsia.' This is the type of child found by Mr. Trollope on Western +steamboats; and we agree with him that beef-steaks, _with pickles_, +produce a bad type of child; and it is unnecessary to confess to Mr. +Trollope what he already knows, that pertness and irreverence to parents +are the great faults of American youth. No doubt the pickles have much +to do with this state of things. + +While awarding high praise to American women _en masse_, Mr. Trollope +mourns over the condition of the Western women with whom he came in +contact, and we are sorry to think that these specimens form the rule, +though of course exceptions are very numerous. 'A Western American man +is not a talking man. He will sit for hours over a stove, with his cigar +in his mouth and his hat over his eyes, chewing the cud of reflection. A +dozen will sit together in the same way, and there shall not be a dozen +words spoken between them in an hour. With the women, one's chance of +conversation is still worse. 'It seemed as though the cares of this +world had been too much for them.... They were generally hard, dry, and +melancholy. I am speaking, of course, of aged females, from +five-and-twenty, perhaps, to thirty, who had long since given up the +amusements and levities of life.' Mr. Trollope's malediction upon the +women of New-York whom he met in the street-cars, is well merited, so +far as many of them are concerned; but he should bear in mind the fact +that these 'many' are foreigners, mostly uneducated natives of the +British isles. Inexcusable as is the advantage which such women +sometimes take of American gallantry, the spirit of this gallantry is +none the less to be commended, and the grateful smile of thanks from +American ladies is not so rare as Mr. Trollope imagines. Mr. Trollope +wants the gallantry abolished; we hope that rude women may learn a +better appreciation of this gallantry by its abolition in flagrant cases +only. Had Mr. Trollope once 'learned the ways' of New-York stages, he +would not have found them such vile conveyances; but we quite agree with +him in advocating the introduction of cabs. In seeing nothing but +vulgarity in Fifth Avenue, and a thirst for gold all over New-York City, +we think Mr. Trollope has given way to prejudice. There is no city so +generous in the spending of money as New-York. Art and literature find +their best patrons in this much-abused Gotham; and it will not do for +one who lives in a glass house to throw stones, for we are not the only +nation of shop-keepers. We do not blame Mr. Trollope, however, for +giving his love to Boston, and to the men and women of intellect who +have homes in and about Boston. + +We are of opinion that Mr. Trollope is too severe upon our hotels; for +faulty though they be, they are established upon a vastly superior plan +to those of any other country, if we are to believe our own experience +and that of the majority of travelers. Mr. Trollope sees no use of a +ladies' parlor; but Mr. Trollope would soon see its indispensability +were he to travel as an unprotected female of limited means. On the +matter of the Post-Office, however, he has both our ears; and much that +he says of our government, and the need of a constitutional change in +our Constitution, deserves attention--likewise what he says of +colonization. We do elevate unworthy persons to the altar of heroism, +and are stupid in our blatant eulogies. It is sincerely to be regretted +that so honest a writer did not devote two separate chapters to the +important subjects of drunkenness and artificial heat, which, had he +known us better, he would have known were undermining the American +_physique_. He does treat passingly of our hot-houses, but seems not to +have faced the worse evil. Of our literature, and of our absorption of +English literature, Mr. Trollope has spoken fully and well; and in his +plea for a national copyright, he might have further argued its +necessity, from the fact that American publishers will give no +encouragement to unknown native writers, however clever, so long as they +can steal the brains of Great Britain. + +To conclude. We like Mr. Trollope's book, for we believe him when he +says: 'I have endeavored to judge without prejudice, and to hear with +honest ears, and to see with honest eyes.' We have the firmest faith in +Mr. Trollope's honesty. We know he has written nothing that he does not +conscientiously believe, and he has given unmistakable evidence of his +good-will to this country. We are lost in amazement when he tells us: 'I +know I shall never again be at Boston, and that I have said that about +the Americans which would make me unwelcome as a guest if I were +there.' Said what? We should be thin-skinned, indeed, did we take +umbrage at a book written in the spirit of Mr. Trollope's. On the +contrary, the Americans who are interested in it are agreeably +disappointed in the verdict which he has given of them; and though they +may not accept his political opinions, they are sensible enough to +appreciate the right of each man to his honest convictions. Mr. +Trollope, though he sees in our future not two, but three, +confederacies, predicts a great destiny for the North. We can see but a +union of all--a Union cemented by the triumph of freedom in the +abolition of that which has been the taint upon the nation. If Mr. +Trollope's prophecies are fulfilled, (and God forbid!) it will be +because we have allowed the golden hour to escape. Pleased as we are +with Mr. Trollope the writer--who has not failed to appreciate the +self-sacrifice of Northern patriotism--Mr. Trollope the _man_ has a far +greater hold upon our heart; a hold which has been strengthened, rather +than weakened, by his book. The friends of Mr. Trollope extend to him +their cordial greeting, and Boston in particular will offer a hearty +shake of the hand to the writer of _North-America_, whenever he chooses +to take that hand again. + + + + +UP AND ACT. + + +The man who is not convinced, by this time, that the Union has come to +'the bitter need,' must be hard to convince. For more than one year we +have put off doing our _utmost_, and talked incessantly of the 'wants of +the enemy.' We have demonstrated a thousand times that they wanted +quinine and calomel, beef and brandy, with every other comfort, luxury, +and necessary, and have ended by discovering that they have forced every +man into their army; that they have, at all events, abundance of +corn-meal, raised by the negroes whom Northern Conservatism has dreaded +to free; that they are well supplied with arms from Abolition England, +and that every day finds them more and more warlike and inured to war. + +Time was, we are told, when a bold, 'radical push' would have prevented +all this. Time was, when those who urged such vigorous and overwhelming +measures--and we were among them--were denounced as insane and +traitorous by the Northern Conservative press. Time was, when the +Irishman's policy of capturing a horse in a hundred-acre lot, 'by +surrounding him,' might have been advantageously exchanged for the more +direct course of going _at_ him. Time _was_, when there were very few +troops in Richmond. All this when time--and very precious time--was. + +Just now, time _is_--and very little time to lose, either. The rebels, +it seems, can live on corn-meal and whisky as well under tents as they +once did in cabins. They are building rams and 'iron-clads,' and very +good ones. They have an immense army, and three or four millions of +negroes to plant for it and feed it. Hundreds of thousands of acres of +good corn-land are waving in the hot breezes of Dixie. These are facts +of the strongest kind--so strong that we have actually been compelled to +adopt some few of the 'radical and ruinous' measures advocated from the +beginning by 'an insane and fanatical band of traitors,' for whose blood +the New-York _Herald_ and its weakly ape, the Boston _Courier_, have not +yet ceased to howl or chatter. Negroes, it seems, are, after all, to be +employed sometimes, and all the work is not to be put upon soldiers who, +as the correspondent of the London _Times_ has truly said, have endured +disasters and sufferings caused by unpardonable neglect, such as _no_ +European troops would have borne without revolt. It is even thought by +some hardy and very desperate 'radicals,' that negroes may be armed and +made to fight for the Union; in fact, it is quite possible that, should +the North succeed in resisting the South a year or two longer, or should +we undergo a few more _very_ great disasters, we may go so far as to +believe what a great French writer has declared in a work on Military +Art, that 'War is war, and he wages it best who injures his enemy most.' +We are aware of the horror which this fanatical radical, and, of course, +Abolitionist axiom, by a writer of the school of Napoleon, must inspire, +and therefore qualify the assertion by the word 'may.' For to believe +that the main props of the enemy are to be knocked away from under them, +and that we are to fairly fight them in _every_ way, involves a +desperate and un-Christian state of mind to which no one should yield, +and which would, in fact, be impious, nay, even un-democratic and +un-conservative. + +It is true that by 'throwing grass' at the enemy, as President Lincoln +quaintly terms it, by the anaconda game, and above all, by constantly +yelling, 'No nigger!' and 'Down with the Abolitionists!' we have +contrived to lose some forty thousand good soldiers' lives by disease; +to stand where we were, and to have myriads of men paralyzed and kept +back from war just at the instant when their zeal was most needed. We +beg our readers to seriously reflect on this last fact. There are +numbers of essential and bold steps in this war, and against the enemy, +which _must_, in the ordinary course of events, be taken, as for +instance. General Hunter's policy of employing negroes, as General +Jackson did. With such a step, _honestly_ considered, no earthly +politics whatever has any thing to do. Yet every one of these sheer +necessities of war which a Napoleon would have grasped at the _first_, +have been promptly opposed as radical, traitorous, and infernal, by +those tories who are only waiting for the South to come in again to rush +and lick its hands as of old. Every measure, from the first arming of +troops down to the employment of blacks, has been fought by these +'reactionaries' savagely, step by step--we might add, in parenthesis, +that it has been amusing to see how they 'ate dirt,' took back their +words and praised these very measures, one by one, as soon as they saw +them taken up by the Administration. The _ecco la fica_ of Italian +history was a small humiliation to that which the 'democratic' press +presented when it glorified Lincoln's 'remuneration message,' and gilded +the pill by declaring it (Heaven knows how!) a splendid triumph over +Abolition--that same remuneration doctrine which, when urged in the +New-York _Tribune_, and in these pages, had been reviled as fearfully +'abolition!' + +However, all these conservative attacks in succession on every measure +which any one could see would become necessities from a merely military +point of view, have had their inevitable result: they have got into the +West, and have aided Secession, as in many cases they were intended to +do. The plain, blunt man, seeing what _must_ be adopted if the war is to +be carried on in earnest, and yet hearing that these inevitable +expediencies were all 'abolition,' became confused and disheartened. So +that it is as true as Gospel, that in the West, where 'Abolition' has +kept one man back from the Union, 'Conservatism' has kept ten. And the +proof may be found that while in the West, as in the East, the better +educated, more intelligent, and more energetic minds, have at once +comprehended the necessities of the war, and dared the whole, 'call it +Abolition or not,' the blinder and more illiterate, who were afraid of +being 'called' Abolitionists, have kept back, or remained by Secession +altogether. + +As we write, a striking proof of our news comes before us in a remark in +an influential and able Western conservative journal, the Nebraska +_News_, The remark in question is to the effect that the proposition +made by us in THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY, to partition the +confiscated real estate of the South among the soldiers of the Federal +army is nothing more nor less than 'a bribe for patriotism.' That is the +word. + +Now, politics apart--abolition or no abolition--we presume there are not +ten rational men in the country who believe that the proposition to +colonize Texas in particular, with free labor, or to settle free +Northern soldiers in the cotton country of the South, is other than +judicious and common-sensible. If it will make our soldiers fight any +better, it certainly is not very much to be deprecated. To settle +disbanded volunteers in the South so as to gradually drive away slave +labor by the superior value of free labor on lands confiscated or +public, is certainly not a very reprehensible proposition. But it +originated, as all the more advanced political proposals of the day do, +with men who favor Emancipation, present or prospective, and _therefore_ +it must be cried down! The worst possible construction is put upon it. +It is 'a bribe for patriotism,' and must not be thought of. 'Better lose +the victory,' says Conservatism, 'rather than inspire the zeal of our +soldiers by offering any tangible reward!' We beg our thousands of +readers in the army to note this. Since we first proposed in these +columns to _properly_ reward the army by giving to each man his share of +cotton-land, [we did not even go so far as to insist that the land +should absolutely be confiscated, knowing well, and declaring, that +Texas contains public land enough for this purpose,] the +democratic-conservative-pro-slavery press, especially of the West, has +attacked the scheme with unwonted vigor. For the West _understands_ the +strength latent in this proposal better than the East; it _knows_ what +can be done when free Northern vigor goes to planting and town-building; +it 'knows how the thing is done;' it 'has been there,' and sees in our +'bribe for patriotism' the most deadly blow ever struck at Southern +Aristocracy. Consequently those men who abuse Emancipation in its every +form, violently oppose our proposal to give the army such reward as +their services merit, and such as their residence in the South renders +peculiarly fit. It is 'a bribe;' it is extravagant; it--yes--it is +Abolition! The army is respectfully requested not to think of settling +in the South, but to hobble back to alms-houses in order that Democracy +may carry its elections and settle down in custom-houses and other snug +retreats. + +And what do the anti-energy, anti-action, anti-contraband-digging, +anti-every thing practical and go-ahead in the war gentlemen propose to +give the soldier in exchange for his cotton-land? Let the soldier +examine coolly, if he can, the next bullet-wound in his leg. He will +perceive a puncture which will probably, when traced around the edge and +carefully copied, present that circular form generally assigned to +a--cipher. _This_ represents, we believe, with tolerable accuracy, what +the anti-actionists and reactionists propose to give the soldier as a +recompense for that leg. For so truly as we live, so true is it that +there is not _one_ anti-Emancipationist in the North who is not opposed +to settling the army or any portion of it in the South, simply because +to do any thing which may in any way interfere with 'the Institution,' +or jar Southern aristocracy, forms no part of their platform! + +We believe this to be as plain a fact as was ever yet submitted to +living man. + +Now, are we to go to work in earnest, to boldly grasp at every means of +honorable warfare, as France or England would do in our case, and +overwhelm the South, or are we going to let it alone? Are we, for years +to come, to slowly fight our way from one small war-expediency to +another, as it may please the mongrel puppies of Democracy to gradually +get their eyes opened or not? Are we to arm the blacks by and by, or +wait till they shall have planted another corn-crop for the enemy? Shall +we inspire the soldiers by promising them cotton-lands now, or wait till +we get to the street of By and By, which leads to the house of Never? +Would we like to have our victory now, or wait till we get it? + +Up and act! We are waiting for grass to grow while the horse is +starving! Let the Administration no longer hold back, for lo! the people +are ready and willing, and one grasp at a fiercely brave, _decided_ +policy would send a roar of approval from ocean to ocean. One tenth part +of the wild desire to adopt instant and energetic measures which is now +struggling into life among the people, would, if transferred to their +leaders, send opposition, North and South, howling to Hades. We find the +irrepressible discontent gathering around like a thunder-storm. It +reaches us in letters. We _know_ that it is growing tremendously in the +army--the discontent which demands a bold policy, active measures, and +one great overwhelming blow. Every woman cries for it--it is everywhere! +Mr. Lincoln, you have waited for the people, and we tell you that the +people are now ready. The three hundred thousand volunteers are coming +bravely on; but, we tell you, DRAFT! That's the thing. The very +word has already sent a chill through the South. _They_ have seen what +can be done by bold, overwhelming military measures; by driving _every_ +man into arms; by being headlong and fearless; and know that it has put +them at once on equality with us--they, the half minority! And they +know, too, that when WE once begin the 'big game,' all will be up with +them. We have more than twice as many men here, and their own blacks are +but a broken reed. When we begin to _draft_, however, war will begin _in +earnest_. They dread that drafting far more than volunteering. They know +by experience, what we have not as yet learned, that drafting contains +many strange secrets of success. It is a _bold_ conscriptive measure, +and indicates serious strength and the _consciousness_ of strength in +government. Our government has hitherto lain half-asleep, half-awake, a +great, good-natured giant, now and then rolling over and crushing some +of the rats running over his bed, and now and then getting very badly +bitten. Wake up, Giant Samuel, all in the morning early! The rats are +coming down on thee, old friend, not by scores, but by tens of +thousands! Jump up, my jolly giant! for verily, things begin to look +serious. You must play the Wide-Awake game now; grasp your stick, knock +them right and left; call in the celebrated dog Halleck, who can kill +his thousand rats an hour, and cry to Sambo to carry out the dead and +bury them! It's rats _now_, friend Samuel, if it ever was! + +Can not the North play the entire game, and shake out the bag, as well +as the South? They have bundled out every man and dollar, dog, cat, and +tenpenny nail into the war, and done it _gloriously_. They have stopped +at nothing, feared nothing, believed in nothing but victory. Now let the +North step out! Life and wife, lands and kin, will be of small value if +we are to lose this battle and become the citizens of a broken country, +going backward instead of forward--a country with a past, but no future. +Better draw every man into the army, and leave the women to hoe and +reap, ere we come to that. _Draft_, Abraham Lincoln--draft, in +GOD'S name! Let us have one rousing, tremendous pull at +victory! Send out such armies as never were seen before. The West has +grain enough to feed them, and tide what may betide, you can arm them. +Let us try what WE can do when it comes to the last emergency. + +When we arise in our _full_ strength, England and France and the South +will be as gnats in the flame before us. And there is no time to lose. +France is 'tinkering away' at Mexico; foreign cannon are to pass from +Mexico into the South; our foe is considering the aggressive policy. +Abraham Lincoln, _the time has come!_ Canada is to attack from the +North, and France from Mexico. Your three hundred thousand are a trifle; +draw out your million; draw the last man who can bear arms--_and let it +be done quickly!_ This is your policy. Let the blows rain thick and +fast. Hurrah! Uncle Samuel--the rats are running! Strike quick, +though--_very_ quick--and you will be saved! + + + + +REMINISCENCES OF ANDREW JACKSON. + + +All public exhibitions have their peculiar physiognomies. During the +passage of General Jackson through Philadelphia, there was a very strong +party opposed to him, which gave a feature to the show differing from +others we had witnessed, but which became subdued in a degree by his +appearance. A firm and imposing figure on horseback, General Jackson was +perfectly at home in the saddle. Dressed in black, with a broad-brimmed +white beaver hat, craped in consequence of the recent death of his wife, +he bowed with composed ease and a somewhat military grace to the +multitude. His tall, thin, bony frame, surmounted by a venerable, +weather-beaten, strongly-lined and original countenance, with stiff, +upright, gray hair, changed the opinion which some had previously +formed. His military services were important, his career undoubtedly +patriotic; but he had interfered with many and deep interests. There was +much dissentient humming. + +The General bowed right and left, lifting his hat often from his head, +appearing at the same time dignified and kind. When the cavalcade first +marched down Chestnut street, there was no immediate escort, or it did +not act efficiently. Rude fellows on horseback, of the roughest +description, sat sideling on their torn saddles just before the +President, gazing vacantly in his face as they would from the gallery of +a theatre, but interrupting the view of his person from other portions +of the public. + +James Reeside, the celebrated mail-contractor, became very much provoked +at one of these fellows. Reeside rode a powerful horse before the +President, and with a heavy, long-lashed riding-whip in his hand, +attempted to drive the man's broken-down steed out of the way. But the +animal was as impervious to feeling as the rider to sense or decency, +and Reeside had little influence over a dense crowd, till the escort +exercised a proper authority in front. I saw the General smile at +Reeside's eagerness to clear the way for him. Of course, this sketch is +a glimpse at a certain point where the procession passed me. I viewed it +again in Arch street, and noticed the calmness with which the General +saluted a crowd of negroes who suddenly gave him a hearty cheer from the +wall of a graveyard where they were perched. He had just taken off his +hat to some ladies waving handkerchiefs on the opposite side of the +street, when he heard the huzza, and replied by a salutation to the +unexpected but not despised color. + +After the fatigue of the parade, when invited to take some refreshment, +Jackson asked for boiled rice and milk at dinner. There was some slight +delay to procure them, but he declined any thing else. + +I recollect an anecdote of Daniel Webster in relation to General +Jackson, which I wish to preserve. On some public occasion, an +entertainment was given, under large tents, near Point-no-Point, in +Philadelphia county, which the representatives to the Legislature were +generally invited to attend. Political antipathies and prejudices were +excessive at that day. No moderate person was tolerated, in the +slightest degree, by the more violent opponents of the Administration. +Mr. Webster was present, and rose to speak. His intelligent and serious +air of grave thought was impressively felt. He spoke his objections to a +certain policy of the Administration with a gentle firmness. I sat near +him. One of his intolerant friends made an inquiry, either at the close +of a short dinner-table address, or during his speech, if 'he was not +still in the practice of visiting at the White House?' I saw Webster's +brow become clouded, as he calmly but slowly explained, 'His position as +Senator required him to have occasional intercourse with the President +of the United States, whose views upon some points of national policy +differed widely from those he (Webster) was well known to entertain;' +when, as if his noble spirit became suddenly aware of the narrow +meanness that had induced the question, he raised himself to his full +hight, and looking firmly at his audience, with a pause, till he caught +the eye of the inquirer, he continued: 'I hope to God, gentlemen, never +to live to see the day when a Senator of the United States _can not_ +call upon the Chief Magistrate of the nation, on account of _any_ +differences in opinion either may possess upon public affairs!' This +honorable, patriotic, and liberal expression was most cordially +applauded by all parties. Many left that meeting with a sense of relief +from the oppression of political intolerance, so nearly allied to the +tyranny of religious bigotry. + +I had been introduced, and was sitting with a number of gentlemen in a +circle round the fire of the President's room, when James Buchanan +presented himself for the first time, as a Senator of the United States +from his native State. 'I am happy to see you, Mr. Buchanan,' said +General Jackson, rising and shaking him heartily by the hand, 'both +personally and politically. Sit down, sir.' The conversation was social. +Some one brought in a lighted corn-cob pipe, with a long reed-stalk, for +the President to smoke. He appeared waiting for it. As he puffed at it, +a Western man asked some question about the fire which had been reported +at the Hermitage. The answer made was, 'it had not been much injured,' I +think, 'but the family had moved temporarily into a log-house,' in +which, the General observed, 'he had spent some of the happiest days of +his life.' He then, as if excited by old recollections, told us he had +an excellent plantation, fine cattle, noble horses, a large still-house, +and so on. 'Why, General,' laughed his Western friend, 'I thought I saw +your name, the other day, along with those of other prominent men, +advocating the cold-water system?' 'I did sign something of the kind,' +replied the veteran, very coolly puffing at his pipe, 'but I had a very +good distillery, for all that!' Before markets became convenient, almost +all large plantations had stills to use up the surplus grains, which +could not be sold to a profit near home. Tanneries and blacksmiths' +shops were also accompaniments, for essential convenience. + +Martin, the President's door-keeper, was very independent, at times, to +visitors at the White House, especially if he had been indulging with +his friends, as was now and then the case. But he was somewhat +privileged, on account of his fidelity and humor. Upon one occasion he +gave great offense to some water-drinking Democrats--rather a rare +specimen at that day--who complained to the President. He promised to +speak to Martin about it. The first opportunity--early, while Martin was +cool--the President sent for him in private, and mentioned the +objection. 'Och! Jineral, dear!' said Martin, looking him earnestly in +the face, 'I'de hev enough to do ef I give ear to all the nonsense +people tell me, even about yerself, Jineral! I wonther _who_ folks don't +complain about, now-a-days? But if they are friends of yours, Jineral, +they maybe hed cause, ef I could only recollict what it was! So we'll +jist let it pass by this time, ef you plase, sur!' Martin remained in +his station. When the successor of Mr. Van Buren came in, the +door-keeper presented himself soon after to the new President, with the +civil inquiry: 'I suppose I'll hev to flit, too, with the _other_ +Martin?' He was smilingly told to be easy. + +I saw General Jackson riding in an open carriage, in earnest +conversation with his successor, as I was on the way to the Capitol to +witness the inaugural oath. A few days after, I shook hands with him for +the last time, as he sat in a railroad-car, about to leave Washington +for the West. Crowds of all classes leaped up to offer such salutations, +all of whom he received with the same easy, courteous, decided manner he +had exhibited on other occasions. + + + + +SHAKSPEARE'S CARICATURE OF RICHARD III. + + +'The youth of England have been said to take their religion from Milton, +and their history from Shakspeare:' and as far as they draw the +character of the last royal Plantagenet from the bloody ogre which every +grand tragedian has delighted to personate, they set up invention on the +pedestal of fact, and prefer slander to truth. Even from the opening +soliloquy, Shakspeare traduces, misrepresents, vilifies the man he had +interested motives in making infamous; while at the death of Jack Cade, +a cutting address is made to the future monarch upon his deformity, just +TWO _years before his birth!_ There is no sufficient authority for his +having been + + 'Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, + Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time + Into this breathing world, scarce half-made up, + And that so lamely and unfashionable, + The dogs bark at me, as I halt by them.' + +A Scotch commission addressed him with praise of the 'princely majesty +and royal authority sparkling in his face.' Rev. Dr. Shaw's discourse to +the Londoners, dwells upon the Protector's likeness to the noble Duke, +his father: his mother was a beauty, his brothers were handsome: a +monstrous contrast on Richard's part would have been alluded to by the +accurate Philip de Comines: the only remaining print of his person is at +least fair: the immensely heavy armor of the times may have bowed his +form a little, and no doubt he was pale, and a little higher shouldered +on the right than the left side: but, if Anne always loved him, as is +now proved, and the princess Elizabeth sought his affection after the +Queen's decease, he could not have been the hideous dwarf at which dogs +howl. Nay, so far from there being an atom of truth in that famous +wooing scene which provokes from Richard the sarcasm: + + 'Was ever woman in this humor wooed? + Was ever woman in this humor won?' + +Richard actually detected her in the disguise of a kitchen-girl, at +London, and renewed his early attachment in the court of the Archbishop +of York. And while Anne was never in her lifetime charged with +insensibility to the death of her relatives, or lack of feeling, she +died not from any cruelty of his, but from weakness, and especially from +grief over her boy's sudden decease. Richard indeed 'loved her early, +loved her late,' and could neither have desired nor designed a calamity +which lost him many English hearts. The burial of Henry VI. Richard +himself solemnized with great state; a favor that no one of Henry's +party was brave and generous enough to return to the last crowned head +of the rival house. + +Gloucester did not need to urge on the well-deserved doom of Clarence: +both Houses of Parliament voted it; King Edward plead for it; the +omnipotent relatives of the Queen hastened it with characteristic +malice; they may have honestly believed that the peaceful succession of +the crown was in peril so long as this plotting traitor lived. No doubt +it was. + +It is next to certain that Richard did not stab Henry VI., nor the +murdered son of Margaret, though he had every provocation in the insults +showered upon his father; was devotedly attached to King Edward, and +hazarded for him person and life with a constancy then unparalleled and +a zeal rewarded by his brother's entire confidence. + +Certain names wear a halter in history, and his was one. Richard I. was +assassinated in the siege of Chalone Castle; Richard II. was murdered at +Pomfret; Richard, Earl of Southampton, was executed for treason; +Richard, Duke of York, was beheaded with insult; his son, Richard III., +fell by the perfidy of his nobles; Richard, the last Duke of York, was +probably murdered by his uncle, in the Tower. + +At the decease of his brother Edward, the Duke of Gloucester was not +only the first prince of the blood royal, but was also a consummate +statesman, intrepid soldier, generous giver, and prompt executor, +naturally compassionate, as is proved by his large pensions to the +families of his enemies, to Lady Hastings, Lady Rivers, the Duchess of +Buckingham, and the rest; peculiarly devout, too, according to a pattern +then getting antiquated, as is shown by his endowing colleges of +priests, and bestowing funds for masses in his own behalf and others. +Shakspeare never loses an opportunity of painting Gloucester's piety as +sheer hypocrisy, but it was not thought so then; for there was a growing +Protestant party whom all these Romanist manifestations of the highest +nobleman in England greatly offended, not to say alarmed. + +Richard's change of virtual into actual sovereignty, in other words, the +Lord Protector's usurpation of the crown, was not done by violence: in +his first royal procession he was unattended by troops; a fickle, +intriguing, ambitious, and warlike nobility approved the change; +Buckingham, Catesby, and others, urged it. No doubt he himself saw that +the crown was not a fit plaything for a twelve years' old boy, in such a +time of frequent treason, ferocious crime, and general recklessness. +There is no question but what, as Richard had more head than any man in +England, he was best fitted to be at its head. + +The great mystery requiring to be explained is, not that 'the +Lancastrian partialities of Shakspeare have,' as Walter Scott said, +'turned history upside down,' and since the battle of Bosworth, no party +have had any interest in vindicating an utterly ruined cause, but how +such troops of nobles revolted against a monarch alike brave and +resolute, wise in council and energetic in act, generous to reward, but +fearful to punish. + +The only solution I am ready to admit is, the imputed assassination of +his young nephews; not only an unnatural crime, but sacrilege to that +divinity which was believed to hedge a king. The cotemporary ballad of +the 'Babes in the Wood,' was circulated by Buckingham to inflame the +English heart against one to whom he had thrown down the gauntlet for a +deadly wrestle. Except that the youngest babe is a girl, and that the +uncle perishes in prison, the tragedy and the ballad wonderfully keep +pace together. In one, the prince's youth is put under charge of an +uncle 'whom wealth and riches did surround;' in the other, 'the uncle is +a man of high estate.' The play soothes the deserted mother with, +'Sister, have comfort;' the ballad with, 'Sweet sister, do not fear.' +The drama says that: + + 'Dighton and Forrest, though they were fleshed villains, + Wept like two children, in their death's sad story.' + +And the poem: + + 'He bargained with two ruffians strong, + Who were of furious mood.' + +But + + 'That the pretty speech they had, + Made murderous hearts relent, + And they that took to do the deed. + Full sore did now repent.' + +There is a like agreement in their deaths: + + 'Thus, thus, quoth Dighton, girdling one another + Within their alabaster, innocent arms.' + +And the ballad: + + 'In one another's arms they died.' + +Finally, the greatest of English tragedies represents Richard's remorse +as: + + 'My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, + And every tongue brings in a several tale, + And every tale condemns me for a villain.' + +While the most pathetic of English ballads gives it: + + 'And now the heavy wrath of God + Upon their uncle fell; + Yea, fearful fiends did haunt his house. + His conscience felt a hell.' + +As it is probable that this ballad was started on its rounds by +Buckingham, the arch-plotter, was eagerly circulated by the Richmond +conspirators, and sung all over the southern part of England as the +fatal assault on Richard was about to be made, we shall hardly wonder +that, in an age of few books and no journals, the imputed crime hurled a +usurper from his throne. + +But was he really _guilty_? Did he deserve to be set up as this +scarecrow in English story? The weight of authority says, 'Yes;' facts +are coming to light in the indefatigable research now being made in +England, which may yet say: 'No.' + +The charge was started by the unprincipled Buckingham to excuse his +sudden conversion from an accomplice, if Shakspeare is to be credited, +to a bloodthirsty foe. It was so little received that, months afterward, +the convocation of British clergy addressed King Richard thus, 'Seeing +your most noble and blessed disposition in all other things'--so little +received that when Richmond actually appeared in the field, there was no +popular insurrection in his behalf, only a few nobles joined him with +their own forces; and when their treason triumphed, and his rival sat +supreme on Richard's throne, the three pretended accomplices in the +murder of the princes were so far from punishment that their chief held +high office for nearly a score of years, and then perished for assisting +at the escape of Lady Suffolk, of the house of York. And when Perkin +Warbeck appeared in arms as the murdered Prince Edward, and the +strongest possible motive urged Henry VII. to justify his usurpation by +producing the bones of the murdered princes, (which two centuries +afterward were pretended to be found at the foot of the Tower-stairs,) +at least to publish to the world the three murderers' confessions, and +demonstrate the absurdity of the popular insurrection, Lord Bacon +himself says, that Henry could obtain no proof, though he spared neither +money nor effort! We have even the statement of Polydore Virgil, in a +history written by express desire of Henry VII., that 'it was generally +reported and believed that Edward's sons were still alive, having been +conveyed secretly away, and obscurely concealed in some distant region.' + +And then the story is laden down with improbabilities. That Brakenbury +should have refused this service to so willful a despot, yet not have +fled from the penalty of disobedience, and even have received additional +royal favors, and finally sacrificed his life, fighting bravely in +behalf of the bloodiest villain that ever went unhung, is a large pill +for credulity to swallow. + +Again, that a mere page should have selected as chief butcher a nobleman +high in office, knighted long before this in Scotland, and that this +same Sir Edward Tyrrel should have been continued in office around the +mother of the murdered princes, and honored year after year with high +office by Henry VII., and actually made confidential governor of +Guisnes, and royal commissioner for a treaty with France, seems +perfectly incredible. All of Shakspeare's representation of this most +slandered courtier is, indeed, utterly false; while Bacon's repetition +of the principal charges only shows how impossible it is to recover a +reputation that has once been lost, and how careless history has been in +repeating calumnies that have once found circulation. + +Bayley's history of the Tower proves that what has been popularly +christened the Bloody Tower could never have been the scene of the +supposed murder; that no bones were found under any staircase there; so +that this pretended confirmation of the murder in the time of Charles +II., on which many writers have relied, vanishes into the stuff which +dreams are made of. + +And yet by this charge which the antiquarian Stowe declared was 'never +proved by any credible witness,' which Grafton, Hall, and Holinshead +agreed could never be certainly known; which Bacon declared that King +Henry in vain endeavored to substantiate, a brave and politic monarch +lost his crown, life, and historic fame! Nay, it is a curious fact that +Richard could not safely contradict the report of the princes' deaths +when it broke out with the outbreak of civil war, because it would have +been furnishing to the rebellion a justifying cause and a royal head, +instead of a milksop whom he despised and felt certain to overthrow. + +As it was, Richard left nothing undone to fortify his failing cause; he +may be thought even to have overdone. He doubled his spies, enlisted +fresh troops, erected fortifications, equipped fleets, twice had +Richmond at his fingers' ends, twice saw Providence take his side in the +dispersion of Richmond's fleet, the overthrow of Buckingham's force; +then was utterly ruined by the general treason of his most trusted +nobles and his not unnatural scorn of a pusillanimous rival. In vain did +he strive to be just and generous, vigilant and charitable, politic and +enterprising. The poor excuse for Buckingham's desertion, the refusal of +the grant of Hereford, is refuted by a Harleian MS. recording that royal +munificence; yet Buckingham, without any question, wove the net in which +this lion fell; he seduced the very officers of the court; he invited +Richmond over, assuring him of a popular uprising, which was proved to +be a mere mockery by the miserable handful that rallied around him, +until Richard fell at Bosworth. And after Buckingham's death, Richmond +merely followed _his_ plans, used the tools he had prepared, headed the +conspiracy which this unmitigated traitor arranged, and profited more +than Richard by his death, because he had not to fear an after-struggle +with Buckingham's insatiable ambition, overweening pride, and +unsurpassed popular power. + +As one becomes familiar with the cotemporary statements, the fall of +Richard seems nothing but the treachery which provoked his last outcry +on the field of death. Even Catesby probably turned against him; his own +Attorney-General invited the invaders into Wales with promise of aid; +the Duke of Northumberland, whom Richard had covered over with honor, +held his half of the army motionless while his royal benefactor was +murdered before his eyes. Stanley was a snake in the grass in the next +reign as well as this, and at last expiated his double treason too late +upon the scaffold. Yet while the nobles went over to Richmond's side, +the common people held back; only three thousand troops, perhaps +personal retainers of their lords, united themselves to the two thousand +Richmond hired abroad. It was any thing but a popular uprising against +the jealous, hateful, bloody humpback of Shakspeare; it excuses the +fatal precipitancy with which the King (instead of gathering his troops +from the scattered fortifications) not only hurried on the battle, but, +when the mine of treason began to explode beneath his feet on Bosworth +field, refused to seek safety by flight, but heading a furious charge +upon Richmond, threw his life magnificently away. + +Even had he been guilty of the great crime which cost him his crown, his +fate would have merited many a tear but for the unrivaled genius at +defamation with which the master-dramatist did homage to the triumphant +house of Lancaster. Lord Orford says, that it is evident the Tudors +retained all their Lancastrian prejudices even in the reign of +Elizabeth; and that Shakspeare's drama was patronized by her who liked +to have her grandsire presented in so favorable a light as the deliverer +of his native land from a bloody tyranny. + +Even in taking the darkest view of his case, we find that other English +sovereigns had sinned the same: Henry I. probably murdered the elder +brother whom he robbed; Edward III. deposed his own father; Henry IV. +cheated his nephew of the sceptre, and permitted his assassination; +Shakspeare's own Elizabeth was not over-sisterly to Mary of Scotland; +all around Richard, robbery, treason, violence, lust, murder, were like +a swelling sea. Why was he thus singled out for the anathema of four +centuries? Why was the naked corpse of one who fell fighting valiantly, +thrown rudely on a horse's back? Why was his stone coffin degraded into +a tavern-trough, and his remains tossed out no man knew where? Not +merely that the Plantagenets never lifted their heads from the gory dust +any more, so that their conquerors wrote the epitaph upon their tombs, +and hired the annalists of their fame; but, still more, that the weak +and assailed Henry required every excuse for his invasion and +usurpation; and that the principal nobility of England wanted a +hiding-place for the shame of their violated oaths, their monstrous +perfidy, their cowardly abandonment in the hour of peril of one of the +bravest leaders, wisest statesmen, and most liberal princes England ever +knew. + + + + +THE NEGRO IN THE REVOLUTION. + + +Whether the negro can or ought to be employed in the Federal army, or in +any way, for the purpose of suppressing the present rebellion, is +becoming a question of very decided significance. It is a little late in +the day, to be sure, since it is probable that the expensive amusement +of dirt-and-shovel warfare might, by the aid of the black, have been +somewhat shorn of its expense, and our Northern army have counted some +thousands of lives more than it now does, had the contraband been freely +encouraged to delve for his deliverance. Still, there are signs of sense +being slowly manifested by the great conservative mass, and we every day +see proof that there are many who, to conquer the enemy, are willing to +do a bold or practical thing, even if it _does_ please the +Abolitionists. Like the rustic youth who was informed of a sure way to +obtain great wealth if he would pay a trifle, they would not mind +getting _that_ fortune if it _did_ cost a dollar. It _is_ a pity, of +course, saith conservatism, that the South can not be conquered in some +potent way which shall at least make it feel a little bad, and at the +same time utterly annihilate that rather respectably sized majority of +Americans who would gladly see emancipation realized. However, as the +potent way is not known, we must do the best we can. In its secret +conclaves, respectable conservatism shakes its fine old head, and +smoothing down the white cravat inherited from the late great and good +Buchanan, admits that the _Richmond Whig_ is almost right, after +all--this Federal cause _is_ very much in the nature of a 'servile +insurrection' of Northern serfs against gentlemen; '_mais que +voulez-vous?_--we have got into the wrong boat, and must sink or swim +with the maddened Helots! And conservatism sighs for the good old days +when they blasphemed _Liberty_ at their little suppers, + + 'And--blest condition!-felt genteel.' + +To be sure, the portraits of Puritan or Huguenot or Revolutionary +ancestors frowned on them from the walls--the portraits of men who had +risked all things for freedom; ''but this is a different state of +things, you know;' we have changed all that--the heart is on the other +side of the body now--let us be discreet!' + +It is curious, in this connection of employing slaves as workmen or +soldiers, with the remembrance of the progressive gentlemen of the olden +time who founded this republic, to see what the latter thought in their +day of such aid in warfare. And fortunately we have at hand what we +want, in a very _multum in parvo_ pamphlet[5] by George H. Moore, +Librarian of the New-York Historical Society. From this we learn that +while great opposition to the project prevailed, owing to wrong +judgment as to the capacity of the black, the expediency and even +necessity of employing him was, during the events of the war, forcibly +demonstrated, and that, when he _was_ employed in a military capacity, +he proved himself a good soldier. + +There were, however, great and good men during the Revolution, who +warmly sustained the affirmative. The famous Dr. Hopkins wrote as +follows in 1776: + + 'God is so ordering it in his providence, that it seems absolutely + necessary something should speedily be done with respect to the + slaves among us, in order to our safety, and to prevent their + turning against us in our present struggle, in order to get their + liberty. Our oppressors have planned to gain the blacks, and induce + them to take up arms against us, by promising them liberty on this + condition; and this plan they are prosecuting to the utmost of + their power, by which means they have persuaded numbers to join + them. And should we attempt to restrain them by force and severity, + keeping a strict guard over them, and punishing them severely who + shall be detected in attempting to join our opposers, this will + only be making bad worse, and serve to render our inconsistence, + oppression and cruelty more criminal, perspicuous and shocking, and + bring down the righteous vengeance of heaven on our heads. The only + way pointed out to prevent this threatening evil, is to set the + blacks at liberty ourselves by some public acts and laws, and then + give them proper encouragement to labor, or take arms in the + defense of the American cause, as they shall choose. This would at + once be doing them some degree of justice, and defeating our + enemies in the scheme they are prosecuting.' + +'These,' says Mr. Moore, 'were the views of a philanthropic divine, who +urged them upon the Continental Congress and the owners of slaves +throughout the colonies with singular power, showing it to be at once +their duty and their interest to adopt the policy of emancipation.' They +did not meet with those of the administration of any of the colonies, +and were formally disapproved. But while the enlistment of negroes was +prohibited, the fact is still notorious, as Bancroft says, that 'the +roll of the army at Cambridge had from its first formation borne the +names of men of color.' 'Free negroes stood in the ranks by the side of +white men. In the beginning of the war, they had entered the provincial +army; the first general order which was issued by Ward had required a +return, among other things, of the 'complexion' of the soldiers; and +black men, like others, were retained in the service after the troops +were adopted by the continent.' + +It was determined on, at war-councils and in committees of conference, +in 1775, that negroes should be rejected from the enlistments; and yet +General Washington found, in that same year, that the negroes, if not +employed in the American army, would become formidable foes when +enlisted by the enemy. We may judge, from a note given by Mr. Moore, +that Washington had at least a higher opinion than his _confreres_ of +the power of the black. His apprehensions, we are told, were grounded +somewhat on the operations of Lord Dunmore, whose proclamation had been +issued declaring 'all indented servants, negroes or others, +(appertaining to rebels,) free,' and calling on them to join his +Majesty's troops. It was the opinion of the commander-in-chief, that if +Dunmore was not crushed before spring, he would become the most +formidable enemy America had; 'his strength will increase as a snow-ball +by rolling, and faster, if some expedient can not be hit upon to +convince the slaves and servants of the impotency of his designs.' +Consequently, in general orders, December 30th, he says: + + 'As the General is informed that numbers of free negroes are + desirous of enlisting, he gives leave to the recruiting-officers to + entertain them, and promises to lay the matter before the Congress, + who, he doubts not, will approve of it.' + +Washington communicated his action to Congress, adding: 'If this is +disapproved of by Congress, I will put a stop to it.' + +His letter was referred to a committee of three, (Mr. Wythe, Mr. Adams, +and Mr. Wilson,) on the fifteenth of January, 1776, and upon their +report on the following day the Congress determined: + + 'That the free negroes who have served faithfully in the army at + Cambridge may be reenlisted therein, but no others.' + +That Washington, at a later period at least, warmly approved of the +employment of blacks as soldiers, appears from his remarks to Colonel +Laurens, subsequent to his failure to carry out what even as an effort +forms one of the most remarkable episodes of the Revolution, full +details of which are given in Mr. Moore's pamphlet. + +On March 14th, 1779, Alexander Hamilton wrote to John Jay, then +President of Congress, warmly commending a plan of Colonel Laurens, the +object of which was to raise three or four battalions of negroes in +South-Carolina. We regret that our limits render it impossible to give +the whole of this remarkable document, which is as applicable to the +present day as it was to its own. + + 'I foresee that this project will have to combat much opposition + from prejudice and self-interest. The contempt we have been taught + to entertain for the blacks makes us fancy many things that are + founded neither in reason nor experience; and an unwillingness to + part with property of so valuable a kind will furnish a thousand + arguments to show the impracticability, or pernicious tendency, of + a scheme which requires such sacrifices. But it should be + considered that if we do not make use of them in this way, the + enemy probably will; and that the best way to counteract the + temptations they will hold out, will be to offer them ourselves. An + essential part of the plan is to give them their freedom with their + swords. This will secure their fidelity, animate their courage, + and, I believe, will have a good influence upon those who remain, + by opening a door to their emancipation. + + 'This circumstance, I confess, has no small weight in inducing me + to wish the success of the project; for the dictates of humanity + and true policy equally interest me in favor of this unfortunate + class of men. + + 'While I am on the subject of Southern affairs, you will excuse the + liberty I take in saying, that I do not think measures sufficiently + vigorous are pursuing for our defense in that quarter. Except the + few regular troops of South-Carolina, we seem to be relying wholly + on the militia of that and two neighboring States. These will soon + grow impatient of service, and leave our affairs in a miserable + situation. No considerable force can be uniformly kept up by + militia, to say nothing of the many obvious and well-known + inconveniences that attend this kind of troops. I would beg leave + to suggest, sir, that no time ought to be lost in making a draft of + militia to serve a twelve-month, from the States of North and + South-Carolina and Virginia. But South-Carolina, being very weak in + her population of whites, may be excused from the draft, on + condition of furnishing the black battalions. The two others may + furnish about three thousand five hundred men, and be exempted, on + that account, from sending any succors to this army. The States to + the northward of Virginia will be fully able to give competent + supplies to the army here; and it will require all the force and + exertions of the three States I have mentioned to withstand the + storm which has arisen, and is increasing in the South. + + 'The troops drafted must be thrown into battalions, and officered + in the best possible manner. The best supernumerary officers may be + made use of as far as they will go. If arms are wanted for their + troops, and no better way of supplying them is to be found, we + should endeavor to levy a contribution of arms upon the militia at + large. Extraordinary exigencies demand extraordinary means. I fear + this Southern business will become a very _grave_ one. + + 'With the truest respect and esteem, + I am, sir, your most obedient servant, + ALEXANDER HAMILTON. + + 'His Excellency, JOHN JAY, + President of Congress,' + + + +The project was warmly approved by Major-General Greene, and Laurens +himself, who proposed to lead the blacks, was enthusiastic in his hopes. +In a letter written about this time, he says: + + 'It appears to me that I should be inexcusable in the light of a + citizen, if I did not continue my utmost efforts for carrying the + plan of the black levies into execution, while there remains the + smallest hope of success. The House of Representatives will be + convened in a few days. I intend to qualify, and make a final + effort. Oh! that I were a Demosthenes! The Athenians never deserved + a more bitter exprobation than our countrymen.' + +But the Legislature of South-Carolina decided, as might have been +expected from the most tory of States in the Revolution, as it now is +the most traitorous in the Emancipation--for it is by _that_ name that +this war will be known in history. It rejected Laurens' proposal--his +own words give the best account of the failure: + + 'I was outvoted, having only reason on my side, and being opposed + by a triple-headed monster, that shod the baneful influence of + avarice, prejudice, and pusillanimity in all our assemblies. It was + some consolation to me, however, to find that philosophy and truth + had made some little progress since my last effort, as I obtained + twice as many suffrages as before.' + +'Washington,' says Mr. Moore, 'comforted Laurens with the confession +that he was not at all astonished by the failure of the plan, adding: + + ''That spirit of freedom, which at the commencement of this contest + would have gladly sacrificed every thing to the attainment of its + object, has long since subsided, and every selfish passion has + taken its place. It is not the public, but private interest, which + influences the generality of mankind, nor can the Americans any + longer boast an exception. Under these circumstances, it would + rather have been surprising if you had succeeded.' + +But the real lesson which this rejection of negro aid taught this +country was a bitter one. South-Carolina lost twenty-five thousand +negroes, and in Georgia between three fourths and seven eighths of the +slaves escaped. The British organized them, made great use of them, and +they became 'dangerous and well-disciplined bands of marauders.' As the +want of recruits in the American army increased, negroes, both bond and +free, were finally and gladly taken. In the department under General +Washington's command, on August 24th, 1778, there were nearly eight +hundred black soldiers. This does not include, however, the black +regiment of Rhode Island slaves which had just been organized. + +In 1778 General Varnum proposed to Washington that a battalion of negro +slaves be raised, to be commanded by Colonel Greene, Lieutenant-Colonel +Olney, and Major Ward. Washington approved of the plan, which, however, +met with strong opposition from the Rhode Island Assembly. The black +regiment was, however, raised, tried, 'and not found wanting.' As Mr. +Moore declares: + + 'In the battle of Rhode-Island, August 29th, 1778, said by + Lafayette to have been 'the best fought action of the whole war,' + this newly raised black regiment, under Colonel Greene, + distinguished itself by deeds of desperate valor, repelling three + times the fierce assaults of an overwhelming force of Hessian + troops. And so they continued to discharge their duty with zeal and + fidelity--never losing any of their first laurels so gallantly won. + It is not improbable that Colonel John Laurens witnessed and drew + some of his inspiration from the scene of their first trial in the + field.' + +A company of negroes from Connecticut was also raised and commanded by +the late General Humphreys, who was attached to the family of +Washington. Of this company cotemporary account says that they +'conducted themselves with fidelity and efficiency throughout the war.' +So, little by little, the negro came to be an effective aid, after all +the formal rejections of his service. In 1780, an act was passed in +Maryland to procure one thousand men to serve three years. The property +in the State was divided into classes of sixteen thousand pounds, each +of which was, within twenty days, to furnish one recruit, who might be +either a freeman or a slave. In 1781, the Legislature resolved to raise, +immediately, seven hundred and fifty negroes, to be incorporated with +the other troops. + +In Virginia an act had been passed in 1777, declaring that free negroes, +and free negroes only, might be enlisted on the footing with white men. +Great numbers of Virginians who wished to escape military service, +caused their slaves to enlist, having tendered them to the +recruiting-officers as substitutes for free persons, whose lot or duty +it was to serve in the army, at the same time representing that these +slaves were freemen. 'On the expiration of the term of enlistment, the +former owners attempted to force them to return to a state of +servitude, with equal disregard of the principles of justice and their +own solemn promise.' + +The iniquity of such proceedings soon raised a storm of indignation, and +the result was the passage of an Act of Emancipation, securing freedom +to all slaves who had served their term in the war. + +Such are the principal facts collected in this remarkable and timely +publication. It is needless to say that we commend it to the careful +perusal of all who desire conclusive information on a most important +subject. It is evident that we are going through nearly the same stages +of timidity, ignorance, and blind conservatism which were passed by our +forefathers, and shall come, if not too late, upon the same results. It +is historically true that Washington apparently had in the beginning +these scruples, but was among the first to lay them aside, and that +experience taught him and many others the folly of scrupling to employ +in regular warfare and in a regular way men who would otherwise aid the +enemy. These are undeniable facts, well worth something more than mere +reflection, and we accordingly commend the work in which they are set +forth, with all our heart, to the reader. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 5: Historical Notes on the Employment of Negroes in the +American Army of the Revolution. By George H. Moore. New-York: Charles +T. Evans, 532 Broadway. Price, ten cents.] + + + + +A MERCHANT'S STORY. + + 'All of which I saw, and part of which I was.' + + +CHAPTER II. + +The clock of St. Paul's was sounding eight. Buttoning my outside coat +closely about me--for it was a cold, stormy night in November--I +descended the steps of the Astor House to visit, in the upper part of +the city, the blue-eyed young woman who is looking over my shoulder +while I write this--it was nearly twenty years ago, reader, but she is +young yet! + +As I closed the outer door, a small voice at my elbow, in a tone broken +by sobs, said: + +'Sir--will you--please, sir--will you buy some ballads?' + +'Ballads! a little fellow like you selling ballads at this time of +night?' + +'Yes, sir! I haven't sold only three all day, sir; do, please sir, _do_ +buy some!' and as he stood under the one gas-burner which lit the +hotel-porch, I saw that his eyes were red with weeping. + +'Come inside, my little man; don't stand here in the cold. Who sends you +out on such a night as this to sell ballads?' + +'Nobody, sir; but mother is sick, and I _have_ to sell 'em! She's had +nothing to eat all day, sir. Oh! do buy some--_do_ buy some, sir!' + +'I will, my good boy; but tell me, have you no father?' + +'No, sir, I never had any--and mother is sick, _very_ sick, sir; and +she's nobody to do any thing for her but _me_--nobody but _me_, sir!' +and he cried as if his very heart would break. + +'Don't cry, my little boy, don't cry; I'll buy your ballads--all of +them;' and I gave him two half-dollar pieces--all the silver I had. + +'I haven't got so many as that, sir; I haven't got only twenty, and +they're only a cent a piece, sir;' and with very evident reluctance, he +tendered me back the money. + +'Oh! never mind, my boy, keep the money and the ballads too.' + +'O sir! thank you. Mother will be so glad, _so_ glad, sir!' and he +turned to go, but his feelings overpowering him, he hid his little face +in the big blanket-shawl which he wore, and sobbed louder and harder +than before. + +'Where does your mother live, my boy?' + +'Round in Anthony street, sir; some good folks there give her a room, +sir.' + +'Did you say she was sick?' + +'Yes, sir, very sick; the doctor says she can't live only a little +while, sir.' + +'And what will become of you, when she is dead?' + +'I don't know, sir. Mother says God will take care of me, sir.' + +'Come, my little fellow, don't cry any more; I'll go with you and see +your mother.' + +'Oh! thank you, sir; mother will be so glad to have you--so glad to +thank you, sir;' and, looking up timidly an my face, he added: 'You'll +_love_ mother, sir!' + +I took his hand in mine, and we went out into the storm. + +He was not more than six years old, and had a bright, intelligent, but +pale and peaked face. He wore thin, patched trowsers, a small, ragged +cap, and large, tattered boots, and over his shoulders was a worn woolen +shawl. I could not see the remainder of his clothing, but I afterward +discovered that a man's waistcoat was his only other garment. + +As I have said, it was a bleak, stormy night. The rain, which had fallen +all the day, froze as it fell, and the sharp, wintry wind swept down +Broadway, sending an icy chill to my very bones, and making the little +hand I held in mine tremble with cold. We passed several blocks in +silence, when the child turned into a side-street. + +'My little fellow,' I said, 'this is not Anthony street--that is further +on.' + +'I know it, sir; but I want to get mother some bread, sir. A good +gentleman down here sells to me very cheap, sir.' + +We crossed a couple of streets and stopped at a corner-grocery. + +'Why, my little 'un,' said the large, red-faced man behind the counter, +'I didn't know what had become of ye! Why haven't ye bin here to-day?' + +'I hadn't any money, sir,' replied the little boy. + +'An' haven't ye had any bread to-day, sonny?' + +'Mother hasn't had any, sir; a little bit was left last night, but she +made _me_ eat that, sir.' + +'D--n it, an' hasn't _she_ hed any all day! Ye mustn't do that agin, +sonny; ye must come whether ye've money or no; times is hard, but, I +swear, I kin give _ye_ a loaf any time.' + +'I thank you, sir,' I said, advancing from the doorway where I had stood +unobserved--'I will pay you;' and taking a roll of bills from my pocket, +I gave him one. 'You know what they want--send it to them at once.' + +The man stared at me a moment in amazement, then said: + +'An' do ye know 'em, sir?' + +'No, I'm just going there.' + +'Well, do, sir; they're bad off; ye kin do real good there, no mistake.' + +'I'll see,' I replied; and taking the bread in one hand and the little +boy by the other, I started again for his mother's. I was always a rapid +walker, but I had difficulty in keeping up with the little fellow as he +trotted along at my side. + +We soon stopped at the door of an old, weather-worn building, which I +saw by the light of the street-lamp was of dingy brick, three stories +high, and hermetically sealed by green board-shutters. It sat but one +step above the ground, and a dim light which came through the low +basement-windows, showed that even its cellar was occupied. My little +guide rang the bell, and in a moment a panel of the door opened, and a +shrill voice asked: + +'Who's there?' + +'It's only me, ma'am; please let me in.' + +'What, _you_, Franky, out so late as this!' exclaimed the woman, undoing +the chain which held the door. As she was about closing it she caught +sight of me, and eyeing me for a moment, said: 'Walk in, sir.' As I +complied with the invitation, she added, pointing to a room opening from +the hall: 'Step in there, sir.' + +'He's come to see mother, ma'am,' said the little boy. + +'You can't see _her_, sir, she's sick, and don't see company any more.' + +'I would see her for only a moment, madam.' + +'But she can't see nobody now, sir.' + +'Oh! mother would like to see him very much, ma'am; he's a very good +gentleman, ma'am,' said the child, in a pleading, winning tone. + +The real object of my visit seemed to break upon the woman, for, making +a low courtesy, she said: + +'Oh! she _will_ be glad to see you, sir; she's very bad off, very bad +indeed;' and she at once led the way to the basement stairway. + +The woman was about forty, with a round, full form, a red, bloated face, +and eyes which looked as if they had not known a wink of sleep for +years. She wore a dirty lace-cap, trimmed with gaudy colors, and a +tawdry red and black dress, laid off in large squares like the map of +Philadelphia. It was very low in the neck--remarkably so for the +season--and disclosed a scorched, florid skin, and a rough, mountainous +bosom. + +The furnishings of the hall had a shabby-genteel look, till we reached +the basement stairs, when every thing became bare, and dark, and dirty. +The woman led the way down, and opened the door of a front-room--the +only one on the floor, the rest of the space being open, and occupied as +a cellar. This room had a forlorn, cheerless appearance. Its front wall +was of the naked brick, through which the moisture had crept, dotting it +every here and there with large water-stains and blotches of mold. Its +other sides were of rough boards, placed upright, and partially covered +with a dirty, ragged paper. The floor was of wide, unpainted plank. A +huge chimney-stack protruded some three feet into the room, and in it +was a hole which admitted the pipe of a rusty air-tight stove that gave +out just enough heat to take the chill edge off the damp, heavy +atmosphere. This stove, a small stand resting against the wall, a +broken-backed chair, and a low, narrow bed covered with a ragged +patch-work counterpane, were the only furniture of the apartment. And +that room was the home of two human beings. + +'How do you feel to-night, Fanny?' asked the woman, as she approached +the low bed in the corner. There was a reply, but it was too faint for +me to hear. + +'Here, mamma,' said the little boy, taking me by the hand and leading me +to the bedside, 'here's a good gentleman who's come to see you. He's +_very_ good, mamma; he's given me a whole dollar, and got you lots of +things at the store; oh! lots of things!' and the little fellow threw +his arms around his mother's neck, and kissed her again and again in his +joy. + +The mother turned her eye upon me--such an eye! It seemed a black flame. +And her face--so pale, so wan, so woe-begone, and yet so sweetly, +strangely, beautiful--seemed that of some fallen angel, who, after long +ages of torment, had been purified, and fitted again for heaven! And it +was so. She had suffered all the woe, she had wept for all the sin, and +then she stood white and pure before the everlasting gates which were +opening to let her in! + +She reached me her thin, weak hand, and in a low voice, said: 'I thank +you, sir.' + +'You are welcome, madam. You are very sick; it hurts you to speak?' + +She nodded slightly, but said nothing. I turned to the woman who had +admitted me, and in a very low tone said: 'I never saw a person die; is +she not dying?' + +'No, sir, I guess not. She's seemed so for a good many days.' + +'Has she had a physician?' + +'Not for nigh a month. A doctor come once or twice, but he said it wan't +no use--he couldn't help her.' + +'But she should have help at once. Have you any one you can send?' + +'Oh! yes; I kin manage that. What doctor will you have?' + +I wrote on a piece of paper the name of an acquaintance--a skillful and +experienced physician, who lived not far off--and gave it to her. + +'And can't you make her a cup of tea, and a little chicken-broth? She +has had nothing all day.' + +'Nothing all day! I'm sure I didn't know it! I'm poor, sir--you don't +know how poor--but she shan't starve in my house.' + +'I suppose she didn't like to speak of it; but get her something as soon +as you can.' + +'I will, sir; I'll fix her some tea and broth right off.' + +'Well, do, as quick as possible. I'll pay you for your trouble.' + +'I don't want any pay, sir,' she replied, as she turned and darted from +the doorway as nimbly as if she had not been fat and forty. + +She soon returned with the tea, and I gave it to the sick girl, a +spoonful at a time, she being too weak to sit up. It was the first she +had tasted for weeks, and it greatly revived her. + +After a time, the doctor came. He felt her pulse, asked, her a few +questions in a low voice, and then wrote some simple directions. When he +had done that, he turned to me and said: 'Step outside for a moment; I +want to speak with you.' + +As we passed out, we met the woman going in with the broth. + +'Please give it to her at once,' I said. + +'Yes, sir, I will; but, gentlemen, don't stand here in the cold. Walk up +into the parlor--the front-room.' + +We did as she suggested, for the cellar-way had a damp, unhealthy air. + +The parlor was furnished in a showy, tawdry style, and a worn, ugly, +flame-colored carpet covered its floor. A coal-fire was burning in the +grate, and we sat down by it. As we did so, I heard loud voices, mingled +with laughter and the clinking of glasses, in the adjoining room. Not +appearing to notice the noises, the doctor asked: + +'Who is this woman?' + +'I don't know; I never saw her before. Is she dying?' + +'No, not now. But she can't last long; a week, at the most.' + +'She evidently has the consumption. That damp cellar has killed her; she +should be got out of it.' + +'The cellar hasn't done it; her very vitals are eaten up. She's been +beyond cure for six months!' + +'Is it possible? And such a woman!' + +'Oh! I see such cases every day--women as fine-looking as she is.' + +A ring came at the front-door, and in a moment I heard the woman coming +up the basement stairs. I had risen when the doctor made the last +remark, and was pacing up and down the room, deliberating on what should +be done. The parlor-door was ajar, and as the woman admitted the +new-comers, I caught a glimpse of them. They were three rough, +hard-looking characters; and one, from his unsteady gait, I judged to be +intoxicated. She seemed glad to see them, and led them into the room +from whence the noises proceeded. In a moment the doctor rose to go, +saying: 'I can do nothing more. But what do you intend to do here? I +brought you out to ask you.' + +'I don't know what _can_ be done. She ought not to be left to die +there.' + +'She'd prefer dying above-ground, no doubt; and if you relish fleecing, +you'll get her an upper room--but she's got to die soon any way, and a +day or two, more or less, down there, won't make any difference. Take my +advice--don't throw your money away, and don't stay here too late; the +house has a very hard name, and some of its rough customers would think +nothing of throttling a spruce young fellow like you.' + +'I thank you, doctor, but I think I'll run the risk--at least for a +while,' and I laughed good-humoredly at the benevolent gentleman's +caution. + +'Well, if you lose your small change, don't charge it to me.' Saying +this, he bade me 'good-night.' + +He found the door locked, barred, and secured by the large chain, and he +was obliged to summon the woman. When she had let him out, I asked her +into the parlor. + +'Who is this sick person?' I inquired. + +'I don't know, sir. She never gave me no name but Fanny. I found her and +her little boy on the door-step, one night, nigh a month ago. She was +crying hard, and seemed very sick, and little Franky was a-trying to +comfort her--he's a brave, noble little fellow, sir. She told me she'd +been turned out of doors for not paying her rent, and was afeared she'd +die in the street, though she didn't seem to care much about that, +except for the boy--she took on terrible about him. She didn't know what +_would_ become of him. I've to scrape very hard to get along, sir, for +times is hard, and my rent is a thousand dollars; but I couldn't see her +die there, so I took her in, and put a bed up in the basement, and let +her have it. 'Twas all I could do; but, poor thing! she won't want even +that long.' + +'It was very good of you. How has she obtained food?' + +'The little boy sells papers and ballads about the streets. The newsman +round the corner trusts him for 'em, and he's managed to make +twenty-five cents or more most every day.' + +'Can't you give her another room? She should not die where she is.' + +'I know she shouldn't, sir, but I hain't got another--all of 'em is +taken up; and besides, sir,' and she hesitated a moment, 'the noise up +here would disturb her.' + +I had not thought of that; and expressing myself gratified with her +kindness, I passed down again to the basement. The sick girl smiled as I +opened the door, and held out her hand again to me. Taking it in mine, I +asked: + +'Do you feel better?' + +'Much better,' she said, in a voice stronger than before. 'I have not +felt so well for a long time. I owe it to you, sir! I am very grateful.' + +'Don't speak of it, madam. Won't you have more of the broth?' + +'No more, thank you. I won't trouble you any more, sir--I shan't trouble +any one long;' and her eyes filled, and her voice quivered; 'but, O sir! +my child! my little boy! What _will_ become of him when I'm gone?' and +she burst into a hysterical fit of weeping. + +'Don't weep so, madam. Calm yourself; such excitement will kill you. God +will provide for your child. I will try to help him, madam.' + +She looked at me with those deep, intense eyes. A new light seemed to +come into them; it overspread her face, and lit up her thin, wan +features with a strange glow. + +'It must be so,' she said, 'else why were you led here? God must have +sent you to me for that!' + +'No doubt he did, madam. Let it comfort you to think so.' + +'It does, oh! it does. And, O my Father!' and she looked up to Him as +she spoke: 'I thank thee! Thy poor, sinful, dying child thanks thee; +and, oh! bless _him_, forever bless him, for it!' + +I turned away to hide the emotion I could not repress. A moment after, +not seeing the little boy, I asked: + +'Where is your son?' + +'Here, sir.' And turning down the bed-clothing, she showed him sleeping +quietly by her side, all unconscious of the misery and the sin around +him, and of the mighty crisis through which his young life was passing. + +Saying I would return on the following day, I shortly afterward bade her +'good-night,' and left the house. + + +CHAPTER III. + +It was noon on the following day when I again visited the house in +Anthony street. As I opened the door of the sick woman's room, I was +startled by her altered appearance. Her eye had a strange, wild light, +and her face already wore the pallid hue of death. She was bolstered up +in bed, and the little boy was standing by her side, weeping, his arms +about her neck. I took her hand in mine, and in a voice which plainly +spoke my fears, said: + +'You are worse!' + +In broken gasps, and in a low, a very low tone, her lips scarcely +moving, she answered: + +'No! I am--better--much--better. I knew you--were coming. She told me +so.' + +'_Who_ told you so?' I asked, very kindly, for I saw that her mind was +wandering. + +'My mother--she has been with me--all the day--and I have been so--so +happy, so--_very_ happy! I am going now--going with her--I've only +waited--for you!' + +'Say no more now, madam, say no more; you are too weak to talk.' + +'But I _must_ talk. I am--dying, and I must tell--you all before--I go!' + +'I would gladly hear you, but you have not strength for it now. Let me +get something to revive you.' + +She nodded assent, and looking at her son, said: + +'Take Franky.' + +The little boy kissed her, and followed me from the room. When we had +reached the upper-landing, I summoned the woman of the house, and said +to him: + +'Now, Franky, I want you to stay a little while with this good lady; +your mother would talk with me.' + +'But mother says she's dying, sir,' cried the little fellow, clinging +closely to me; 'I don't want her to die, sir. Oh! I want to be with her, +sir!' + +'You shall be, very soon, my boy; your _mother_ wants you to stay with +this lady now.' + +He released his hold on my coat, and sobbing violently, went with the +red-faced woman. I hurried back from the apothecary's, and seating +myself on the one rickety chair by her bedside, gave the sick woman the +restorative. She soon revived, and then, in broken sentences, and in a +low, weak voice, pausing every now and then to rest or to weep, she told +me her story. Weaving into it some details which I gathered from others +after her death, I give it to the reader as she outlined it to me. + +She was the only daughter of a well-to-do farmer in the town of B----, +New-Hampshire. Her mother died when she was a child, and left her to the +care of a paternal aunt, who became her father's housekeeper. This aunt, +like her father, was of a cold, hard nature, and had no love for +children. She was, however, an exemplary, pious woman. She denied +herself every luxury, and would sit up late of nights to braid straw and +knit socks, that she might send tracts and hymn-books to the poor +heathen; but she never gave a word of sympathy, or a look of love to the +young being that was growing up by her side. The little girl needed +kindness and affection, as much as plants need the sun; but the good +aunt had not these to give her. When the child was six years old, she +was sent to the district-school. There she met a little boy not quite +five years her senior, and they soon became warm friends. He was a +brave, manly lad, and she thought no one was ever so good, or so +handsome as he. Her young heart found in him what it craved for--some +one to lean on and to love, and she loved him with all the strength of +her child-nature. He was very kind to her. Though his home was a mile +away, he came every morning to take her to school, and in the long +summer vacations he almost lived at her father's house. And thus four +years flew away--flew as fast as years that are winged with youth and +love always fly--and though her father was harsh, and her aunt cold and +stern, she did not know a grief, or shed a tear in all that time. + +One day, late in summer, toward the close of those four years, +John--that was his name--came to her, his face beaming all over with +joy, and said: + +'O Fanny! I am going--going to Boston. Father [he was a richer man than +her father] has got me into a great store there--a great store, and I'm +to stay till I'm twenty-one--they won't pay me hardly any thing--only +fifty dollars the first year, and twenty-five more every other year--but +father says it's a great store, and it'll be the making of me.' And he +danced and sung for joy, but she wept in bitter grief. + +Well, five more years rolled away--this time they were not winged as +before--and John came home to spend his two weeks of summer vacation. He +had come every year, but then he said to her what he had never said +before--that which a woman never forgets. He told her that the old +Quaker gentleman, the head of the great house he was with, had taken a +fancy to him, and was going to send him to Europe, in the place of the +junior partner, who was sick, and might never get well. That he should +stay away a year, but when he came back, he was sure the old fellow +would make him a partner, and then--and he strained her to his heart as +he said it--'then I will make you my little wife, Fanny, and take you to +Boston, and you shall be a fine lady--as fine a lady as Kate Russell, +the old man's daughter.' And again he danced and sung, and again she +wept, but this time it was for joy. + +He staid away a little more than a year, and when he returned he did not +come at once to her, but he wrote that he would very soon. In a few days +he sent her a newspaper, in which was a marked notice, which read +somewhat as follows: + + 'The co-partnership heretofore existing under the name and style of + RUSSELL, ROLLINS & Co., has been dissolved by the death of + DAVID GRAY, Jr. + + 'The outstanding affairs will be settled, and the business + continued, by the surviving partners, who have this day admitted + Mr. JOHN HALLET to an interest in their firm.' + +The truth had been gradually dawning upon me, yet when she mentioned his +name, I sprang involuntarily to my feet, exclaiming: + +'John Hallet! and were _you_ betrothed to _him_?' + +The sick woman had paused from exhaustion, but when I said that, she +made a feeble effort to raise herself, and said in a stronger voice than +before: + +'Do you know him--sir?' + +'Know him! Yes, madam;' and I paused and spoke in a lower tone, for I +saw that my manner was unduly exciting her; 'I know him well.' + +I did know him _well_, and it was on the evening of the day that notice +was written, and just one month after David had followed his only son to +the grave, that I, a boy of sixteen, with my hat in my hand, entered the +inner office of the old counting-room to which I have already introduced +the reader. Mr. Russell, a genial, gentle, good old man, was seated at +his desk, writing; and Mr. Rollins sat at his, poring over some long +accounts. + +'Mr. Russell and Mr. Rollins,' I said very respectfully, 'I have come to +bid you good-by. I am going to leave you.' + +'Thee going to leave!' exclaimed Mr. Russell, laying down his +spectacles; 'what does thee mean, Edmund?' + +'I mean, I don't want to stay any longer, sir,' I replied, my voice +trembling with emotion. + +'But you must stay, Edmund,' said Mr. Rollins, in his harsh, imperative +way. 'Your uncle indentured you to us till you are twenty-one, and you +can't go.' + +'I _shall_ go, sir,' I replied, with less respect than he deserved. 'My +uncle indentured me to the old firm; I am not bound to stay with the +new.' + +Mr. Russell looked grieved, but in the same mild tone as before, he +said: + +'I am sorry, Edmund, very sorry, to hear thee say that. Thee can go if +thee likes; but it grieves me to hear thee quibble so. Thee will not +prosper, my son, if thee follows this course in life.' And the moisture +came into the old man's eyes as he spoke. It filled mine, and rolled in +large drops down my cheeks, as I replied: + +'Forgive me, sir, for speaking so. I do not want to do wrong, but I +_can't_ stay with John Hallet.' + +'Why can't thee stay with John?' + +'He don't like me, sir. We are not friends.' + +'Why are you not friends?' + +'Because I know him, sir.' + +'What do you know of him?' asked Mr. Rollins, in the same harsh, abrupt +tone. I had never liked Mr. Rollins, and his words just then stung me to +the quick, I forgot myself, for I replied: + +'I know him to be a lying, deceitful, hypocritical scoundrel, sir.' + +Some two years before, Hallet had joined the church in which Mr. Rollins +was a deacon, and was universally regarded as a pious, devout young man. +The opinion I expressed was, therefore, rank heterodoxy. To my surprise, +Mr. Rollins turned to Mr. Russell and said: + +'I believe the boy is right, Ephraim; John professes too much to be +entirely sincere; I've told you so before.' + +'I can't think so, Thomas; but it's too late to alter things now. We +shall see. Time will prove him.' + +I soon left, but not till they had shaken me warmly by the hand, wished +me well, and tendered me their aid whenever I required it. In +after-years they kept their word. + +Yes, I did know John Hallet. The old gentleman never knew him, but time +proved him, and those whom that good old man loved with all the love of +his large, noble heart, suffered because he did not know him as I did. + +After I had given her some of the cordial, and she had rested awhile, +the sick girl resumed her story. + +In about a month Hallet came. He pictured to her his new position; the +wealth and standing it would give him, and he told her that he was +preparing a little home for her, and would soon return and take her with +him forever. + +[When he said that, he had been for over a year affianced to another--a +rich man's only child--a woman older than he, whose shriveled, jaundiced +face, weak, scrawny body, and puny, sickly soul, would have been +repulsive even to him, had not money been his god.] + +The simple, trusting girl believed him. He importuned her--she loved +him--and she fell! + +About a month afterward, taking up a Boston paper, she read the marriage +of Mr. John Hallet, merchant, to Miss ----. 'Some other person has +his name,' she thought. 'It can not be he, yet it is strange!' It _was_ +strange, but it was _true_, for there, in another column, she saw that: +'Mr. John Hallet, of the house of Russell, Rollins & Co., and his +accomplished lady, were passengers by the steamer Cambria, which sailed +from this port yesterday for Liverpool.' + +The blow crushed her. But why need I tell of her grief, her agony, her +despair? For months she did not leave her room; and when at last she +crawled into the open air, the nearest neighbors scarcely recognized +her. + +It was long, however, before she knew all the wrong that Hallet had done +her. Her aunt noticed her altered appearance, and questioned her. She +told her all. At first, the cold, hard woman blamed her, and spoke +harshly to her; but, though cold and harsh, she had a woman's heart, and +she forgave her. She undertook to tell the story to her brother. He had +his sister's nature; was a strict, pious, devout man; prayed every +morning and evening in his family, and, rain or shine, went every Sunday +to hear two dull, cast-iron sermons at the old meeting-house, but he had +not her woman's heart. He stormed and raved for a time, and then he +cursed his only child, and drove her from his house. The aunt had forty +dollars--the proceeds of sock-knitting and straw-braiding not yet +invested in hymn-books, and with one sigh for the poor heathen, she gave +it to her. With that, and a small satchel of clothes, and with two +little hearts beating under her bosom, she went out into the world. +Where could she go? She knew not, but she wandered on till she reached +the village. The stage was standing before the tavern-door, and the +driver was mounting the box to start. She thought for a moment. She +could not stay there. It would anger her father, if she did--no one +would take her in--and besides, she could not meet, in her misery and +her shame, those who had known her since childhood. She spoke to the +driver; he dismounted, opened the door, and she took a seat in the coach +to go--she did not know whither, she did not care where. + +They rode all night, and in the morning reached Concord. As she stepped +from the stage, the red-faced landlord asked her if she was going +further. She said, 'I do not know, sir;' but then a thought struck her. +It was five months since Hallet had started for Europe, and perhaps he +had returned. She would go to him. Though he could not undo the wrong he +had done, he still could aid and pity her. She asked the route to +Boston, and after a light meal, was on the way thither. + +She arrived after dark, and was driven to the Marlboro Hotel--that +Eastern Eden for lone women and tobacco-eschewing men--and there she +passed the night. Though weak from recent illness, and worn and wearied +with the long journey, she could not rest or sleep. The great sorrow +that had fallen on her had driven rest from her heart, and quiet sleep +from her eye-lids forever. In the morning she inquired the way to +Russell, Rollins & Co.'s, and after a long search found the grim, old +warehouse. She started to go up the rickety old stairs, but her heart +failed her. She turned away and wandered off through the narrow, crooked +streets--she did not know for how long. She met the busy crowd hurrying +to and fro, but no one noticed or cared for her. She looked at the neat, +cheerful homes smiling around her, and she thought how every one had +shelter and friends but her. She gazed up at the cold, gray sky, and oh! +how she longed that it might fall down and bury her forever. And still +she wandered till her limbs grew weary and her heart grew faint. At last +she sank down exhausted, and wept--wept as only the lost and the utterly +forsaken can weep. Some little boys were playing near, and after a time +they left their sports, and came to her. They spoke kindly to her, and +it gave her strength. She rose and walked on again. A livery-carriage +passed her, and she spoke to the coachman. After a long hour she stood +once more before the old warehouse. It was late in the afternoon, and +she had eaten nothing all day, and was very faint and tired. As she +turned to go up the old stairway, her heart again failed her, but +summoning all her strength, she at last entered the old counting-room. + +A tall, spare, pleasant-faced man, was standing at the desk, and she +asked him if Mr. John Hallet was there. + +'No, madam, he's in Europe.' + +'When will he come back, sir?' + +'Not for a year, madam;' and David raised his glasses and looked at her. +He had not done it before. + +Her last hope had failed, and with a heavy, crushing pain in her heart, +and a dull, dizzy feeling in her head, she turned to go. As she +staggered away a hand was gently placed on her arm, and a mild voice +said: + +'You are ill, madam; sit down.' + +She took the proffered seat, and an old gentleman came out of the inner +office. + +'What! what's this, David?' he asked. 'What ails the young woman?' + +(She was then not quite seventeen.) + +'She's ill, sir,' said David. + +'Only a little tired, sir; I shall be better soon.' + +'But thee _is_ ill, my child; thee looks so. Come here, Kate!' and the +old gentleman raised his voice as if speaking to some one in the inner +room. The sick girl lifted her eyes, and saw a blue-eyed, golden-haired +young woman, not so old as she was. + +'She seems very sick, father. Please, David, get me some water;' and the +young lady undid the poor girl's bonnet, and bathed her temples with the +cool, grateful fluid. After a while the old gentleman asked: + +'What brought thee here, young woman?' + +'I came to see John--Mr. Hallet, I mean, sir.' + +'Thee knows John, then?' + +'Oh! yes, sir.' + +'Where does thee live?' + +She was about to say that she had no home, but checking herself, for it +would seem strange that a young girl who knew John Hallet, should be +homeless, she answered: + +'In New-Hampshire. I live near old Mr. Hallet's, sir. I came to see John +because I've known him ever since I was a child.' + +She drank of the water, and after a little time rose to go. As she +turned toward the door, the thought of going out alone, with her great +sorrow, into the wide, desolate world, crossed her mind, the heavy, +crushing pain came again into her heart, the dull, dizzy feeling into +her head, the room reeled, and she fell to the floor. + +It was after dark when she came to herself. She was lying on a bed in a +large, splendidly furnished room, and the same old gentleman and the +same young woman were with her. Another old gentleman was there, and as +she opened her eyes, he said: + +'She will be better soon; her nervous system has had a severe shock; the +difficulty is there. If you could get her to confide in you, 'twould +relieve her; it is _hidden_ grief that kills people. She needs rest, +now. Come, my child, take this,' and he held a fluid to her lips. She +drank it, and in a few moments sank into a deep slumber. + +It was late on the following morning when she awoke, and found the same +young woman at her bedside. + +'You are better, now, my sister. A few days of quiet rest will make you +well,' said the young lady. + +The kind, loving words, almost the first she had ever heard from woman, +went to her heart, and she wept bitterly as she replied: + +'Oh! no, there is no rest, no more rest for me!' + +'Why so? What is it that grieves you? Tell me; it will ease your pain to +let me share it with you.' + +She told her, but she withheld his name. Once it rose to her lips, but +she thought how those good people would despise him, how Mr. Russell +would cast him off, how his prospects would be blasted, and she kept it +back. + +'And that is the reason you went to John? You knew what a good, +Christian young man he is, and you thought he would aid you?' + +'Yes!' said the sick girl. + +Thus she punished him for the great wrong he had done her; thus she +recompensed him for robbing her of home, of honor, and of peace! + +Kate told her father the story, and the good old man gave her a room in +one of his tenement houses, and there, a few months later, she gave +birth to a little boy and girl. She was very sick, but Kate attended to +her wants, procured her a nurse, and a physician, and gave her what she +needed more than all else--kindness and sympathy. + +Previous to her sickness she had earned a support by her needle, and +when she was sufficiently recovered, again had recourse to it. Her +earnings were scanty, for she was not yet strong, but they were eked out +by an occasional remittance from her aunt, which good lady still adhered +to her sock-knitting, straw-braiding habits, but had turned her back +resolutely on her benighted brethren and sisters of the Feejee Islands. + +Thus nearly a year wore away, when her little girl sickened and died. +She felt a mother's pang at first, but she shed no tears, for she knew +it was 'well with the child;' that it had gone where it would never know +a fate like hers. + +The watching with it, added to her other labors, again undermined her +health. The remittance from her aunt did not come as usual, and though +she paid no rent, she soon found herself unable to earn a support. The +Russells had been so good, so kind, had done so much for her, that she +could not ask them for more. What, then, should she do? One day, while +she was in this strait, Kate called to see her, and casually mentioned +that John Hallet had returned. She struggled with her pride for a time, +but at last made up her mind to apply to him. She wrote to him; told him +of her struggles, of her illness, of her many sufferings, of her little +boy--his image, his child--then playing at her feet, and she besought +him by the love he bore her in their childhood, not to let his once +affianced wife, and his poor, innocent child STARVE! + +Long weeks went by, but no answer came; and again she wrote him. + +One day, not long after sending this last letter, as she was crossing +the Common to her attic in Charles street, she met him. He was alone, +and saw her, but attempted to pass her without recognition. She stood +squarely in his way, and told him she _would_ be heard. He admitted +having received her letters, but said he could do nothing for her; that +the brat was not _his_; that she must not attempt to fasten on _him_ the +fruit of her debaucheries; that no one would believe her if she did; and +he added, as he turned away, that he was a married man, and a Christian, +and could not be seen talking with a lewd woman like her. + +She was stunned. She sank down on one of the benches on the Common, and +tried to weep; but the tears would not come. For the first time since he +so deeply, basely wronged her, she felt a bitter feeling rising in her +heart. She rose, and turned her steps up Beacon Hill toward Mr. +Russell's, fully determined to tell Kate all. She was admitted, and +shown to Miss Russell's room. She told her that she had met her seducer, +and how he had cast her off. + +'Who is he?' asked Kate. 'Tell me, and father shall publish him from one +end of the universe to the other! He does not deserve to live.' + +His name trembled on her tongue. A moment more, and John Hallet would +have been a ruined man, branded with a mark that would have followed him +through the world. But she paused; the vision of his happy wife, of the +innocent child just born to him, rose before her, and the words melted +away from her lips unspoken. + +Kate spoke kindly and encouragingly to her, but she heeded her not. One +only thought had taken possession of her: how could she throw off the +mighty load that was pressing on her soul? + +After a time, she rose and left the house. As she walked down Beacon +street, the sun was just sinking in the West, and its red glow mounted +midway up the heavens. As she looked at it, the sky seemed one great +molten sea, with its hot, lurid waves surging all around her. She +thought it came nearer; that it set on fire the green Common and the +great houses, and shot fierce, hot flames through her brain and into her +very soul. For a moment, she was paralyzed and sank to the ground; then +springing to her feet, she flew to her child. She bounded down the long +hill, and up the steep stairways, and burst into the room of the good +woman who was tending him, shouting: + +'Fire! fire! The world is on fire! Run! run! the world is on fire!' + +She caught up her babe and darted away. With him in her arms, she flew +down Charles street, across the Common, and through the crowded +thoroughfares, till she reached India Wharf, all the while muttering, +'Water, water;' water to quench the fire in her blood, in her brain, in +her very soul. + +She paused on the pier, and gazed for a moment at the dark, slimy flood; +then she plunged down, down, where all is forgetfulness! + +She had a dim recollection of a storm at sea; of a vessel thrown +violently on its beam-ends; of a great tumult, and of voices louder than +she ever heard before--voices that rose above the howling of the tempest +and the surging of the great waves--calling out: 'All hands to clear +away the foremast!' But she knew nothing certain. All was chaos. + +The next thing she remembered was waking one morning in a little room +about twelve feet square, with a small grated opening in the door. The +sun had just risen, and by its light she saw she was lying on a low, +narrow bed, whose clothing was spotlessly white and clean. Her little +boy was sleeping by her side. His little cheeks had a rosier, healthier +hue than they ever wore before; and as she turned down the sheet, she +saw he had grown wonderfully. She could hardly credit her senses. Could +that be _her_ child? + +She spoke to him. He opened his eyes and smiled, and put his little +mouth up to hers, saying, 'Kiss, mamma, kiss Fanky.' She took him in her +arms, and covered him with kisses. Then she rose to dress herself. A +strange but neat and tidy gown was on the chair, and she put it on; it +fitted exactly. Franky then rolled over to the front of the bed, and +putting first one little foot out and then the other, let himself down +to the floor. 'Can it be?' she thought, 'can he both walk and talk?' +Soon she heard the bolt turning in the door. It opened, and a pleasant, +elderly woman, with a large bundle of keys at her girdle, entered the +room. + +'And how do you do this morning, my daughter?' she asked. + +'Very well, ma'am. Where am I, ma'am?' + +'You ask where? Then you _are_ well. You haven't been for a long, long +time, my child.' + +'And _where_ am I, ma'am?' + +'Why, you are here--at Bloomingdale.' + +'How long have I been here?' + +'Let me see; it must be near fifteen months, now.' + +'And who brought me?' + +'A vessel captain. He said that just as he was hauling out of the dock +at Boston, you jumped into the water with your child. One of his men +sprang overboard and saved you. The vessel couldn't put back, so he +brought you here.' + +'Merciful heaven! did I do that?' + +'Yes. You must have been sorely troubled, my child. But never mind--it +is all over now. But hasn't Franky grown? Isn't he a handsome boy? Come +here to grandma, my baby.' And the good woman sat down on a chair, while +the little fellow ran to her, put his small arms around her neck, and +kissed her over and over again. Children are intuitive judges of +character; no really bad man or woman ever had the love of a child. + +'Yes, he _has_ grown. You call him Franky, do you?' + +'Yes; we didn't know his name. What had you named him?' + +'John Hallet.' + +As she spoke those words, a sharp pang shot through her heart. It was +well that her child had another name! + +She was soon sufficiently recovered to leave the asylum. By the kind +offices of the matron, she got employment in a cap-factory, and a plain +but comfortable boarding-place in the lower part of the city. She worked +at the shop, and left Franky during the day with her landlady, a +kind-hearted but poor woman. Her earnings were but three dollars a week, +and their board was two and a quarter; but on the balance she contrived +to furnish herself and her child with clothes. The only luxury she +indulged in was an occasional _walk_, on Sunday to Bloomingdale, to see +her good friend the kind-hearted matron. + +Thus things went on for two years; and if not happy, she was at least +comfortable. Her father never relented; but her aunt wrote her often, +and there was comfort in the thought that, at least, one of her early +friends had not cast her off. The good lady, too, sent her now and again +small remittances, but they came few and far between; for as the pious +woman grew older, her heart gradually returned to its first love--the +poor heathen. + +To Kate Russell Fanny wrote as soon she left the asylum, telling her of +all that had happened as far as she knew, and thanking her for all her +goodness and kindness to her. She waited some weeks, but no answer came; +then she wrote again, but still no answer came, though that time she +waited two or three months. Fearing then that something had befallen +her, she mustered courage to write Mr. Russell. Still she got no reply, +and she reluctantly concluded--though she had not asked them for +aid--that they had ceased to feel interested in her. + +'They had not, madam. Kate has often spoken very kindly of you. She +wanted to come here to-day, but I did not know this, and I could not +bring her _here_!' + +She looked at me with a strange surprise. Her eyes lighted, and her face +beamed, as she said: 'And you know _her_, too!' + +'Know her! She is to be my wife very soon.' + +She wept as she said: 'And you will tell her how much I love her--how +grateful I am to her?' + +'I will,' I replied. I did not tell the poor girl, as I might have done, +that Hallet had at that time access to Mr. Russell's mails, and that, +knowing her hand-writing, he had undoubtedly intercepted her letters. + +After a long pause, she resumed her story. + +At the end of those two years, a financial panic swept over the country, +prostrating the great houses, and sending want and suffering into the +attics--not homes, for they have none--of the poor sewing-women. The +firm that employed her failed, and Fanny was thrown out of work. She +went to her good friend the matron, who interested some 'benevolent' +ladies in her behalf, and they procured her shirts to make at +twenty-five cents apiece! She could hardly do enough of them to pay her +board; but she could do the work at home with Franky, and that was a +comfort, for he was growing to be a bright, intelligent, affectionate +boy. + +About this time, her aunt and the good matron died. She mourned for them +sincerely, for they were all the friends she had. + +The severe times affected her landlady. Being unable to pay her rent, +she was sold out by the sheriff, and Fanny had to seek other lodgings. +She then took a little room by herself, and lived alone. + +The death of the matron was a great calamity to her, for her +'benevolent' friends soon lost interest in her, and took from her the +poor privilege of making shirts at twenty-five cents apiece! When this +befell her, she had but four dollars and twenty cents in the world. This +she made furnish food to herself and her child for four long weeks, +while she vainly sought for work. She offered to do any thing--to sew, +scrub, cook, wash--any thing; but no! there was nothing for +her--NOTHING! She must drain the cup to the very dregs, that the +vengeance of God--and He would not be just if He did not take terrible +vengeance for crime like his--might sink John Hallet to the lowest hell! + +For four days she had not tasted food. Her child was sick. She had +_begged_ a few crumbs for him, but even _he_ had eaten nothing all day. +Then the tempter came, and--why need I say it?--she sinned. Turn not +away from her, O you, her sister, who have never known a want or felt a +woe! Turn not away. It was not for herself; she would have died--gladly +have died! It was for her sick, starving child that she did it. Could +she, _should_ she have seen him STARVE? + +Some months after that, she noticed in the evening paper, among the +arrivals at the Astor House, the name of John Hallet. That night she +went to him. She was shown to his room, and rapping at the door, was +asked to 'walk in.' She stepped inside and stood before him. He sprang +from his seat, and told her to leave him. She begged him to hear +her--for only one moment to hear her. He stamped on the floor in his +rage, and told her again to go! She did not go, for she told him of the +pit of infamy into which she had fallen, and she prayed him, as he hoped +for heaven, as he loved his own child, to save her! Then, with terrible +curses, he opened the door, laid his hands upon her, and--thrust her +from the room! + +Why should I tell how, step by step, she went down; how want came upon +her; how a terrible disease fastened its fangs on her vitals; how Death +walked with her up and down Broadway in the gas-light; how, in her very +hours of shame, there came to her visions of the innocent +past--thoughts of what she MIGHT HAVE BEEN and of what SHE WAS? The mere +recital of such misery harrows the very soul; and, O God! what must be +the REALITY! + +As she finished the tale which, in broken sentences, with long pauses +and many tears, she had given me, I rose from my seat, and pacing the +room, while the hot tears ran from my eyes, I said; 'Rest easy, my poor +girl! As sure as God lives, you shall be avenged. John Hallet shall feel +the misery he has made you feel. I will pull him down--down so low, that +the very beggars shall hoot at him in the streets!' + +'Oh! no; do not harm him! Leave him to God. He may yet repent!' + +The long exertion had exhausted her. The desire to tell me her story had +sustained her; but when she had finished, she sank rapidly. I felt of +her pulse--it scarcely beat; I passed my hand up her arm--it was icy +cold to the elbow! She was indeed dying. Giving her some of the cordial, +I called her child. + +When I returned, she took each of us by the hand, and said to Franky: +'My child--your mother is going away--from you. Be a good boy--love this +gentleman--he will take care of you!' Then to me she said: 'Be kind to +him, sir. He is--a good child!' + +'Have comfort, madam, he shall be my son. Kate will be a mother to him!' + +'Bless you! bless her! A mother's blessing--will be on you both! The +blessing of God--will be on you--and if the dead can come back--to +comfort those they love--I will come back--and comfort _you_!' + +I do not know--I can not know till the veil which hides her world from +ours, is lifted from my eyes, but there have been times--many +times--since she said that, when Kate and I have thought she was KEEPING +HER WORD! + +For a half-hour she lay without speaking, still holding our hands in +hers. Then, in a low tone--so low that I had to bend down to hear--she +said: + +'Oh! is it not beautiful! Don't you hear? And look! oh! look! And my +mother, too! Oh! it is too bright for such as I!' + +The heavenly gates had opened to her! She had caught a vision of the +better land! + +In a moment she said: + +'Farewell my friend--my child--I will come----' Then a low sound +rattled in her throat, and she passed away, just as the last rays of the +winter sun streamed through the low window. One of its bright beams +rested on her face, and lingered there till we laid her away forever. + +And now, as I sit with Kate on this grassy mound, this mild summer +afternoon, and write these lines, we talk together of her short, sad +life, of her calm, peaceful death, and floating down through the long +years, comes to us the blessing of her pure, redeemed spirit, pleasant +as the breath of the flowers that are growing on her grave. We look up, +and, through our thick falling tears, read again the words which we +placed over her in the long ago: + + FRANCES MANDELL: + + Aged 23. + + SHE SUFFERED AND SHE DIED. + + WEEP FOR HER. + + + + +TAKE CARE! + + + When the blades of shears are biting, + Finger not their edges keen; + When man and wife are fighting, + He faces ill who comes between. + JOHN BULL, in our grief delighting, + Take care how you intervene! + + + + +SHOULDER-STRAPS; + +OR, MEN, MANNERS, AND MOTIVES IN 1862. + + +CHAPTER I. + + INTRODUCTORY AND EPISODICAL--MEASURING-WORMS, DUSSELDORF PICTURES, + AND PARISIAN FORTUNE-TELLERS. + +This is going to be an odd jumble. + +Without being an odd jumble, it could not possibly reflect American life +and manners at the present time with any degree of fidelity; for the +foundations of the old in society have been broken up as effectually, +within the past two years, as were those of the great deep at the time +of Noah's flood, and the disruption has not taken place long enough ago +for the new to have assumed any appearance of stability. The old deities +of fashion have been swept away in the flood of revolution, and the new +which are eventually to take their place have scarcely yet made +themselves apparent through the general confusion. The millionaire of +two years ago, intent at that time on the means by which the revenues +from his brown-stone houses and pet railroad stocks could be spent to +the most showy advantage, has become the struggling man of to-day, +intent upon keeping up appearances, and happy if diminished and doubtful +rents can even be made to meet increasing taxes. The struggling man of +that time has meanwhile sprung into fortune and position, through lucky +adventures in government transportations or army contracts; and the +jewelers of Broadway and Chestnut street are busy resetting the diamonds +of decayed families, to sparkle on brows and bosoms that only a little +while ago beat with pride at an added weight of California paste or +Kentucky rock-crystal. The most showy equipages that have this year been +flashing at Newport and Saratoga, were never seen between the +bathing-beach and Fort Adams, or between Congress Spring and the Lake, +in the old days; and if opera should ever revive, and the rich notes of +melody repay the _impresario_, as they enrapture the audience at the +Academy, there will be new faces in the most prominent boxes, almost as +_outre_ and unaccustomed in their appearance there as was that of the +hard-featured Western President, framed in a shock head and a turn-down +collar, meeting the gaze of astonished Murray Hill, when he passed an +hour here on his way to the inauguration. + +Quite as notable a change has taken place in personal reputation. Many +of the men on whom the country depended as most likely to prove able +defenders in the day of need, have not only discovered to the world +their worthlessness, but filled up the fable of the man who leaned upon +a reed, by fatally piercing those whom they had betrayed to their fall. +Bubble-characters have burst, and high-sounding phrases have been +exploded. Men whose education and antecedents should have made them +brave and true, have shown themselves false and cowardly--impotent for +good, and active only for evil. Unconsidered nobodies have meanwhile +sprung forth from the mass of the people, and equally astonished +themselves and others by the power, wisdom and courage they have +displayed. In cabinet and camp, in army and navy, in the editorial chair +and in the halls of eloquence, the men from whom least was expected have +done most, and those upon whom the greatest expectations had been +founded have only given another proof of the fallacy of all human +calculations. All has been change, all has been transition, in the +estimation men have held of themselves, and the light in which they +presented themselves to each other. + +Opinions of duties and recognitions of necessities have known a change +not less remarkable. What yesterday we believed to be fallacy, to-day we +know to be truth. What seemed the fixed and immutable purpose of God +only a few short months ago, we have already discovered to have been +founded only in human passion or ambition. What seemed eternal has +passed away, and what appeared to be evanescent has assumed stability. +The storm has been raging around us, and doing its work not the less +destructively because we failed to perceive that we were passing through +any thing more threatening than a summer shower. While we have stood +upon the bank of the swelling river, and pointed to some structure of +old rising on the bank, declaring that not a stone could be moved until +the very heavens should fall, little by little the foundations have been +undermined, and the full crash of its falling has first awoke us from +our security. That without which we said that the nation could not live, +has fallen and been destroyed; and yet the nation does not die, but +gives promise of a better and more enduring life. What we cherished we +have lost; what we did not ask or expect has come to us; the effete old +is passing away, and out of the ashes of its decay is springing forth +the young and vigorous new. Change, transition, every where and in all +things: how can society fail to be disrupted, and who can speak, write, +or think with the calm decorum of by-gone days? + +All this is obtrusively philosophical, of course, and correspondingly +out of place. But it may serve as a sort of forlorn hope--mental food +for powder--while the narrative reserve is brought forward; and there is +a dim impression on the mind of the writer that it may be found to have +some connection with that which is necessarily to follow. + +So let the odd jumble be prepared, perhaps with ingredients as +incongruous as those which at present compose what we used to call the +republic, and as unevenly distributed as have been honors and emoluments +during a struggle which should have found every man in his place, and +every national energy employed to its best purpose. + +I was crossing the City Hall Park to dinner at Delmonico's, one +afternoon early in July, in company with a friend who had spent some +years in Europe, and only recently returned. He may be called Ned +Martin, for the purposes of this narration. He had left the country in +its days of peace and prosperity, a frank, whole-souled young artist, +his blue eyes clear as the day, and his faith in humanity unbounded. He +had resided for a long time at Paris, and at other periods been +sojourning at Rome, Florence, Vienna, Dusseldorf, and other places where +art studies called him or artist company invited him. He had come back +to his home and country after the great movements of the war were +inaugurated, and when the great change which had been initiated was most +obvious to an observing eye. I had heard of his arrival in New York, but +failed to meet him, and not long after heard that he had gone down to +visit the lines of our army on the Potomac. Then I had heard of his +return some weeks after, and eventually I had happened upon him drinking +a good-will glass with a party of friends at one of the popular +down-town saloons, when stepping in for a post-prandial cigar. The +result of that meeting had been a promise that we would dine together +one evening, and the after-result was, that we were crossing the Park to +keep that promise. + +I have said that Ned Martin left this country a frank, blue-eyed, +happy-looking young artist, who seemed to be without a care or a +suspicion. It had only needed a second glance at his face, on the day +when I first met him at the bar of the drinking-saloon, to know that a +great change had fallen upon him. He was yet too young for age to have +left a single furrow upon his face; not a fleck of silver had yet +touched his brown hair, nor had his fine, erect form been bowed by +either over-labor or dissipation. Yet he was changed, and the second +glance showed that the change was in the _eyes_. Amid the clear blue +there lay a dark, sombre shadow, such as only shows itself in eyes that +have been turned _inward_. We usually say of the wearer of such eyes, +after looking into them a moment, 'That man has studied much;' 'has +suffered much;' or, '_he is a spiritualist_.' By the latter expression, +we mean that he looks more or less beneath the surface of events that +meet him in the world--that he is more or less a student of the +spiritual in mentality, and of the supernatural in cause and effect. +Such eyes do not stare, they merely gaze. When they look at you, they +look at something else through you and behind you, of which you may or +may not be a part. + +Let me say here, (this chapter being professedly episodical,) that the +painter who can succeed in transferring to canvas that expression of +_seeing more than is presented to the physical eye_, has achieved a +triumph over great difficulties. Frequent visitors to the old Dusseldorf +Gallery will remember two instances, perhaps by the same painter, of the +eye being thus made to reveal the inner thought and a life beyond that +passing at the moment. The first and most notable is in the 'Charles the +Second Fleeing from the Battle of Worcester.' The king and two nobles +are in the immediate foreground, in flight, while far away the sun is +going down in a red glare behind the smoke of battle, the lurid flames +of the burning town, and the royal standard just fluttering down from +the battlements of a castle lost by the royal arms at the very close of +Cromwell's 'crowning mercy.' Through the smoke of the middle distance +can be dimly seen dusky forms in flight, or in the last hopeless +conflict. Each of the nobles at the side of the fugitive king is heavily +armed, with sword in hand, mounted on heavy, galloping horses going at +high speed; and each is looking out anxiously, with head turned aside as +he flies, for any danger which may menace--not himself, but the +sovereign. Charles Stuart, riding between them, is mounted upon a dark, +high-stepping, pure-blooded English horse. He wears the peaked hat of +the time, and his long hair--that which afterward became so notorious in +the masks and orgies of Whitehall, and in the prosecution of his amours +in the purlieus of the capital--floats out in wild dishevelment from his +shoulders. He is dressed in the dark velvet, short cloak, and broad, +pointed collar peculiar to pictures of himself and his unfortunate +father; shows no weapon, and is leaning ungracefully forward, as if +outstripping the hard-trotting speed of his horse. But the true interest +of this figure, and of the whole picture, is concentrated in the eyes. +Those sad, dark eyes, steady and immovable in their fixed gaze, reveal +whole pages of history and whole years of suffering. The fugitive king +is not thinking of his flight, of any dangers that may beset him, of the +companions at his side, or even of where he shall lay his periled head +in the night that is coming. Those eyes have shut away the physical and +the real, and through the mists of the future they are trying to read +the great question of _fate_! Worcester is lost, and with it a kingdom: +is he to be henceforth a crownless king and a hunted fugitive, or has +the future its compensations? This is what the fixed and glassy eyes are +saying to every beholder, and there is not one who does not answer the +question with a mental response forced by that mute appeal of suffering +thought: 'The king shall have his own again!' + +The second picture in the same collection is much smaller, and commands +less attention; but it tells another story of the same great struggle +between King and Parliament, through the agency of the same feature. A +wounded cavalier, accompanied by one of his retainers, also wounded, is +being forced along on foot, evidently to imprisonment, by one of +Cromwell's Ironsides and a long-faced, high-hatted Puritan cavalry-man, +both on horseback, and a third on foot, with _musquetoon_ on shoulder. +The cavalier's garments are rent and blood-stained, and there is a +bloody handkerchief binding his brow and telling how, when his house was +surprised and his dependents slaughtered, he himself fought till he was +struck down, bound and overpowered. He strides sullenly along, looking +neither to the right nor the left; and the triumphant captors behind him +know nothing of the story that is told in his face. The eyes, fixed and +steady in the shadow of the bloody bandage, tell nothing of the pain of +his wound or the tension of the cords which are binding his crossed +wrists. In their intense depth, which really seems to convey the +impression of looking through forty feet of the still but dangerous +waters of Lake George and seeing the glimmering of the golden sand +beneath, we read of a burned house and an outraged family, and we see a +prophecy written there, that if his mounted guards could read, they +would set spurs and flee away like the wind--a calm, silent, but +irrevocable prophecy: 'I can bear all this, for my time is coming! Not a +man of all these will live, not a roof-tree that shelters them but will +be in ashes, when I take my revenge!' Not a gazer but knows, through +those marvelous eyes alone, that the day is coming that he _will_ have +his revenge, and that the subject of pity is the victorious Roundhead +instead of the wounded and captive cavalier! + +I said, before this long digression broke the slender chain of +narration, that some strange, spiritualistic shadow lay in the eyes of +Ned Martin; and I could have sworn, without the possibility of an error, +that he had become an habitual reader of the inner life, and almost +beyond question a communicant with influences which some hold to be +impossible and others unlawful. + +The long measuring-worms hung pendent from their gossamer threads, as we +passed through the Park, as they have done, destroying the foliage, in +almost every city of the Northern States. One brushed my face as I +passed, and with the stick in my hand I struck the long threads of +gossamer and swept several of the worms to the ground. One, a very large +and long one, happened to fall on Martin's shoulder, lying across the +blue flannel of his coat in the exact position of a shoulder-strap. + +'I say, Martin,' I said, 'I have knocked down one of the worms upon +_you_.' + +'Have you?' he replied listlessly, 'then be good enough to brush it off, +if it does not crawl off itself. I do not like worms.' + +'I do not know who _does_ like them,' I said, 'though I suppose, being +'worms of the dust,' we ought to bear affection instead of disgust +toward our fellow-reptiles. But, funnily enough,' and I held him still +by the shoulder for a moment to contemplate the oddity, 'this +measuring-worm, which is a very big one, has fallen on your shoulder, +and seems disposed to remain there, in the very position of a +_shoulder-strap_! You must belong to the army!' + +It is easy to imagine what would be the quick, convulsive writhing +motion with which one would shrink aside and endeavor to get +instantaneously away from it, when told that an asp, a centipede or a +young rattlesnake was lying on the shoulder, and ready to strike its +deadly fangs into the neck. But it is not easy to imagine that even a +nervous woman, afraid of a cockroach and habitually screaming at a +mouse, would display any extraordinary emotion on being told that a +harmless measuring-worm had fallen upon the shoulder of her dress. What +was my surprise, then, to see the face of Martin, that had been so +impassive the moment before when told that the worm had fallen upon his +coat, suddenly assume an expression of the most awful fear and agony, +and his whole form writhe with emotion, as he shrunk to one side in the +effort to eject the intruder instantaneously! + +'Good God! Off with it--quick! Quick, for heaven's sake!' he cried, in a +frightened, husky voice that communicated his terror to me, and almost +sinking to the ground as he spoke. + +Of course I instantly brushed the little reptile away; but it was quite +a moment before he assumed an erect position, and I saw two or three +quick shudders pass over his frame, such as I had not seen since, many a +long year before, I witnessed the horrible tortures of a strong man +stricken with hydrophobia. Then he asked, in a voice low, quavering and +broken: + +'Is it gone?' + +'Certainly it is!' I said. 'Why, Martin, what under heaven can have +affected you in this manner? I told you that I had knocked a worm on +your coat, and you did not appear to heed it any more than if it had +been a speck of dust. It was only when I mentioned the _shape_ it had +assumed, that you behaved so unaccountably! What does it mean? Are you +afraid of worms, or only of _shoulder-straps_?' And I laughed at the +absurdity of the latter supposition. + +'Humph!' said Martin, who seemed to have recovered his equanimity, but +not shaken off the impression. 'You laugh. Perhaps you will laugh more +when I tell you that it was not the worm, _as_ a worm, of which I was +thinking at all, and that my terror--yes, I need not mince words, I was +for the moment in abject terror--had to do altogether with the shape +that little crawling pest had assumed, and the part of my coat on which +he had taken a fancy to lodge himself!' + +'No, I should not laugh,' I said; 'but I _should_ ask an explanation of +what seems very strange and unaccountable. Shall I lacerate a feeling, +or tread upon ground made sacred by a grief, if I do so?' + +'Not at all,' was the reply. 'In fact, I feel at this moment very much +as the Ancient Mariner may have done the moment before he met the +wedding-guest--when, in fact, he had nobody to button-hole, and felt the +strong necessity of boring some one!' There was a tone of gayety in this +reply, which told me how changeable and mercurial my companion could be; +and I read an evident understanding of the character and mission of the +noun-substantive 'bore,' which assured me that he was the last person in +the world likely to play such a part. 'However,' he concluded, 'wait a +bit. When we have concluded the raspberries, and wet our lips with +green-seal, I will tell you all that I myself know of a very singular +episode in an odd life.' + +Half an hour after, the conditions of which he spoke had been +accomplished, over the marble at Delmonico's, and he made me the +following very singular relation: + +'I had returned from a somewhat prolonged stay at Vienna,' he said, 'to +Paris, late in 1860. During the fall and winter of that year I spent a +good deal of time at the Louvre, making a few studies, and satisfying +myself as to some identities that had been called in question during my +rambles through the Imperial Gallery at Vienna. I lodged in the little +Rue Marie Stuart, not far from the Rue Montorgeuil, and only two or +three minutes' walk from the Louvre, having a baker with a pretty wife +for my landlord, and a cozy little room in which three persons could sit +comfortably, for my domicil. As I did not often have more than two +visitors, my room was quite sufficient; and as I spent a large +proportion of my evenings at other places than my lodgings, the space +was three quarters of the time more than I needed. + +'I do not know that I can have any objection to your knowing, before I +go any further, that I am and have been for some years a believer in +that of which Hamlet speaks when he says: 'There are more things in +heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.' You +may call me a _Spiritualist_, if you like, for I have no reverence for +or aversion to names. I do not call _myself_ so; I only say that I +believe that more things come to us in the way of knowledge, than we +read, hear, see, taste, smell, or feel with the natural and physical +organs. I know, from the most irrefragable testimony, that there are +communications made between one and another, when too far apart to reach +each other by any of the recognized modes of intercourse; though how or +why they are made I have no definite knowledge. Electricity--that +'tongs with which God holds the world'--as a strong but odd thinker once +said in my presence, may be the medium of communication; but even this +must be informed by a living and sentient spirit, or it can convey +nothing. People learn what they would not otherwise know, through +mediums which they do not recognize and by processes which they can not +explain; and to know this is to have left the beaten track of old +beliefs, and plunged into a maze of speculation, which probably makes +madmen of a hundred while it is making a wise man of _one_. But I am +wandering too far and telling you nothing. + +'One of my few intimates in Paris, a young Prussian by the name of +Adolph Von Berg, had a habit of visiting mediums, clairvoyants, and, not +to put too fine a point upon it, fortune-tellers. Though I had been in +company with clairvoyants in many instances, I had never, before my +return to Paris in the late summer of 1860, entered any one of those +places in which professional fortune-tellers carried on their business. +It was early in September, I think, that at the earnest solicitation of +Von Berg, who had been reading and smoking with me at my lodgings, I +went with him, late in the evening, to a small two-story house in the +Rue La Reynie Ogniard, a little street down the Rue Saint Denis toward +the quays of the Seine, and running from Saint Denis across to the Rue +Saint Martin. The house seemed to me to be one of the oldest in Paris, +although built of wood; and the wrinkled and crazy appearance of the +front was eminently suggestive of the face of an old woman on which time +had long been plowing furrows to plant disease. The interior of the +house, when we entered it by the dingy and narrow hallway, that night, +well corresponded with the exterior. A tallow-candle in a tin sconce was +burning on the wall, half hiding and half revealing the grime on the +plastering, the cobwebs in the corners, and the rickety stairs by which +it might be supposed that the occupants ascended to the second story. + +'My companion tinkled a small bell that lay upon a little uncovered +table in the hall, (the outer door having been entirely unfastened, to +all appearance,) and a slattern girl came out from an inner room. On +recognizing my companion, who had visited the house before, she led the +way without a word to the same room she had herself just quitted. There +was nothing remarkable in this. A shabby table, and two or three still +more shabby chairs, occupied the room, and a dark wax-taper stood on the +table, while at the side opposite the single window a curtain of some +dark stuff shut in almost one entire side of the apartment. We took +seats on the rickety chairs, and waited in silence, Adolph informing me +that the etiquette (strange name for such a place) of the house did not +allow of conversation, not with the proprietors, carried on in that +apartment sacred to the divine mysteries. + +'Perhaps fifteen minutes had elapsed, and I had grown fearfully tired of +waiting, when the corner of the curtain was suddenly thrown back, and +the figure of a woman stood in the space thus created. Every thing +behind her seemed to be in darkness; but some description of bright +light, which did not show through the curtain at all, and which seemed +almost dazzling enough to be Calcium or Drummond, shed its rays directly +upon her side-face, throwing every feature from brow to chin into bold +relief, and making every fold of her dark dress visible. But I scarcely +saw the dress, the face being so remarkable beyond any thing I had ever +witnessed. I had looked to see an old, wrinkled hag--it being the +general understanding that all witches and fortune-tellers must be long +past the noon of life; but instead, I saw a woman who could not have +been over thirty-five or forty, with a figure of regal magnificence, and +a face that would have been, but for one circumstance, beautiful beyond +description. Apelles never drew and Phidias never chiseled nose or brow +of more classic perfection, and I have never seen the bow of Cupid in +the mouth of any woman more ravishingly shown than in that feature of +the countenance of the sorceress. + +'I said that but for one circumstance, that face would have been +beautiful beyond description. And yet no human eye ever looked upon a +face more hideously fearful than it was in reality. Even a momentary +glance could not be cast upon it without a shudder, and a longer gaze +involved a species of horrible fascination which affected one like a +nightmare. You do not understand yet what was this remarkable and most +hideous feature. I can scarcely find words to describe it to you so that +you can catch the full force of the idea--I must try, however. You have +often seen Mephistopheles in his flame-colored dress, and caught some +kind of impression that the face was of the same hue, though the fact +was that it was of the natural color, and only affected by the lurid +character of the dress and by the Satanic penciling of the eyebrows! You +have? Well, this face was really what that seemed for the moment to be. +It was redder than blood-red as fire, and yet so strangely did the +flame-color play through it that you knew no paint laid upon the skin +could have produced the effect. It almost seemed that the skin and the +whole mass of flesh were transparent, and that the red color came from +some kind of fire or light within, as the red bottle in a druggist's +window might glow when you were standing full in front of it, and the +gas was turned on to full height behind. Every feature--brow, nose, +lips, chin, even the eyes themselves, and their very pupil seemed to be +pervaded and permeated by this lurid flame; and it was impossible for +the beholder to avoid asking himself whether there were indeed spirits +of flame--salamandrines--who sometimes existed out of their own element +and lived and moved as mortals. + +'Have I given you a strange and fearful picture? Be sure that I have not +conveyed to you one thousandth part of the impression made upon myself, +and that until the day I die that strange apparition will remain stamped +upon the tablets of my mind. Diabolical beauty! infernal ugliness!--I +would give half my life, be it longer or shorter, to be able to explain +whence such things can come, to confound and stupefy all human +calculation!' + + +CHAPTER II. + + MORE OF PARISIAN FORTUNE-TELLERS--THE VISIONS OF THE WHITE + MIST--REBELLION, GRIEF, HOPE, BRAVERY AND DESPAIR + +It was after a second bottle of green-seal had flashed out its sparkles +into the crystal, that Ned Martin drew a long breath like that drawn by +a man discharging a painful and necessary duty, and resumed his story: + +'You may some time record this for the benefit of American men and +women,' he went on, 'and if you are wise you will deal chiefly in the +language to which they are accustomed. I speak the French, of course, +nearly as well and as readily as the English; but I _think_ in my native +tongue, as most men continue to do, I believe, no matter how many +dialects they acquire; and I shall not interlard this little narrative +with any French words that can just as well be translated into our +vernacular. + +'Well, as I was saying, there stood my horribly beautiful fiend, and +there I sat spell-bound before her. As for Adolph, though he had told me +nothing in advance of the peculiarities of her appearance, he had been +fully aware of them, of course, and I had the horrible surprise all to +myself. I think the sorceress saw the mingled feeling in my face, and +that a smile blended of pride and contempt contorted the proud features +and made the ghastly face yet more ghastly for one moment. If so, the +expression soon passed away, and she stood, as before, the incarnation +of all that was terrible and mysterious. At length, still retaining her +place and fixing her eyes upon Von Berg, she spoke, sharply, brusquely, +and decidedly: + +''You are here again! What do you want?' + +''I wish to introduce my friend, the Baron Charles Denmore, of England,' +answered Von Berg, 'who wishes----' + +''Nothing!' said the sorceress, the word coming from her lips with an +unmistakably hissing sound. He wants nothing, and he is _not_ the Baron +Charles Denmore! He comes from far away, across the sea, and he would +not have come here to-night but that you insisted upon it! Take him +away--go away yourself--and never let me see you again unless you have +something to ask or you wish me to do you an injury!' + +''But----' began Yon Berg. + +''Not another word!' said the sorceress, 'I have said. Go, before you +repent having come at all!' + +''Madame,' I began to say, awed out of the feeling at least of equality +which I should have felt to be proper under such circumstances, and only +aware that Adolph, and possibly myself, had incurred the enmity of a +being so near to the supernatural as to be at least dangerous--'Madame, +I hope that you will not think----' + +'But here she cut _me_ short, as she had done Von Berg the instant +before. + +''Hope nothing, young artist!' she said, her voice perceptibly less +harsh and brusque than it had been when speaking to my companion. 'Hope +nothing and ask nothing until you may have occasion; then come to me.' + +''And then?' + +''Then I will answer every question you may think proper to put to me. +Stay! you may have occasion to visit me sooner than you suppose, or I +may have occasion to force knowledge upon you that you will not have the +boldness to seek. If so, I shall send for you. Now go, both of you!' + +'The dark curtain suddenly fell, and the singular vision faded with the +reflected light which had filled the room. The moment after, I heard the +shuffling feet of the slattern girl coming to show us out of the room, +but, singularly enough, as you will think, not out of the _house_! +Without a word we followed her--Adolph, who knew the customs of the +place, merely slipping a five-franc piece into her hand, and in a moment +more we were out in the street and walking up the Rue Saint Denis. It is +not worth while to detail the conversation which followed between us as +we passed up to the Rue Marie Stuart, I to my lodgings and Adolph to his +own, further on, close to the Rue Vivienne, and not far from the +Boulevard Montmartre. Of course I asked him fifty questions, the replies +to which left me quite as much in the dark as before. He knew, he said, +and hundreds of other persons in Paris knew, the singularity of the +personal appearance of the sorceress, and her apparent power of +divination, but neither he nor they had any knowledge of her origin. He +had been introduced at her house several months before, and had asked +questions affecting his family in Prussia and the chances of descent of +certain property, the replies to which had astounded him. He had heard +of her using marvelous and fearful incantations, but had never himself +witnessed any thing of them. In two or three instances, before the +present, he had taken friends to the house and introduced them under any +name which he chose to apply to them for the time, and the sorceress had +never before chosen to call him to account for the deception, though, +according to the assurances of his friends after leaving the house, she +had never failed to arrive at the truth of their nationalities and +positions in life. There must have been something in myself or my +circumstances, he averred, which had produced so singular an effect upon +the witch, (as he evidently believed her to be,) and he had the +impression that at no distant day I should again hear from her. That was +all, and so we parted, I in any other condition of mind than that +promising sleep, and really without closing my eyes, except for a moment +or two at a time, during the night which followed. When I did attempt to +force myself into slumber, a red spectre stood continually before me, an +unearthly light seemed to sear my covered eyeballs, and I awoke with a +start. Days passed before I sufficiently wore away the impression to be +comfortable, and at least two or three weeks before my rest became again +entirely unbroken. + +'You must be partially aware with what anxiety we Americans temporarily +sojourning on the other side of the Atlantic, who loved the country we +had left behind on this, watched the succession of events which preceded +and accompanied the Presidential election of that year. Some suppose +that a man loses his love for his native land, or finds it comparatively +chilled within his bosom, after long residence abroad. The very opposite +is the case, I think! I never knew what the old flag was, until I saw it +waving from the top of an American consulate abroad, or floating from +the gaff of one of our war-vessels, when I came down the mountains to +some port on the Mediterranean. It had been merely red, white and blue +bunting, at home, where the symbols of our national greatness were to be +seen on every hand: it was the _only_ symbol of our national greatness +when we were looking at it from beyond the sea; and the man whose eyes +will not fill with tears and whose throat will not choke a little with +overpowering feeling, when catching sight of the Stars and Stripes where +they only can be seen to remind him of the glory of the country of which +he is a part, is unworthy the name of patriot or of man! + +'But to return: Where was I? Oh! I was remarking with what interest we +on the other side of the water watched the course of affairs at home +during that year when the rumble of distant thunder was just heralding +the storm. You are well aware that without extensive and long-continued +connivance on the part of sympathizers among the leading people of +Europe--England and France especially--secession could never have been +accomplished so far as it has been; and there never could have been any +hope of its eventual success if there had been no hope of one or both +these two countries bearing it up on their strong and unscrupulous arms. +The leaven of foreign aid to rebellion was working even then, both in +London and Paris; and perhaps we had opportunities over the water for a +nearer guess at the peril of the nation, than you could have had in the +midst of your party political squabbles at home. + +'During the months of September and October, when your Wide-Awakes on +the one hand, and your conservative Democracy on the other, were +parading the streets with banners and music, as they or their +predecessors had done in so many previous contests, and believing that +nothing worse could be involved than a possible party defeat and some +bad feelings, we, who lived where revolutions were common, thought that +we discovered the smoldering spark which would be blown to revolution +here. The disruption of the Charleston Convention and through it of the +Democracy; the bold language and firm resistance of the Republicans; the +well-understood energy of the uncompromising Abolitionists, and the less +defined but rabid energy of the Southern fire-eaters: all these were +known abroad and watched with gathering apprehension. American +newspapers, and the extracts made from them by the leading journals of +France and Europe, commanded more attention among the Americo-French and +English than all other excitements of the time put together. + +'Then followed what you all know--the election, with its radical result +and the threats which immediately succeeded, that 'Old Abe Lincoln' +should never live to be inaugurated! 'He shall not!' cried the South. +'He shall!' replied the North. To us who knew something of the Spanish +knife and the Italian stiletto, the probabilities seemed to be that he +would never live to reach Washington. Then the mutterings of the thunder +grew deeper and deeper, and some disruption seemed inevitable, evident +to us far away, while you at home, it seemed, were eating and drinking, +marrying and giving in marriage, holding gala-days and enjoying +yourselves generally, on the brink of an arousing volcano from which the +sulphurous smoke already began to ascend to the heavens! So time passed +on; autumn became winter, and December was rolling away. + +'I was sitting with half-a-dozen friends in the chess-room at Very's, +about eleven o'clock on the night of the twentieth of December, talking +over some of the marvelous successes which had been won by Paul Morphy +when in Paris, and the unenviable position in which Howard Staunton had +placed himself by keeping out of the lists through evident fear of the +New-Orleanian, when Adolph Von Berg came behind me and laid his hand on +my shoulder. + +''Come with me a moment,' he said, 'you are wanted!' + +''Where?' I asked, getting up from my seat and following him to the +door, before which stood a light _coupe_, with its red lights flashing, +the horse smoking, and the driver in his seat. + +''I have been to-night to the Rue la Reynie Ogniard!' he answered. + +''And are you going there again?' I asked, my blood chilling a little +with an indefinable sensation of terror, but a sense of satisfaction +predominating at the opportunity of seeing something more of the +mysterious woman. + +''I am!' he answered, 'and so are _you_! She has sent for you! Come!' + +'Without another word I stepped into the _coupe_, and we were rapidly +whirled away. I asked Adolph how and why I had been summoned; but he +knew nothing more than myself, except that he had visited the sorceress +at between nine and ten that evening, that she had only spoken to him +for an instant, but ordered him to go at once and find his friend, _the +American_, whom he had falsely introduced some months before as the +English baron. He had been irresistibly impressed with the necessity of +obedience, though it would break in upon his own arrangements for the +later evening, (which included an hour at the Chateau Rouge;) had picked +up a _coupe_, looked in for me at two or three places where he thought +me most likely to be at that hour in the evening, and had found me at +Very's, as related. What the sorceress could possibly want of me, he had +no idea more than myself; but he reminded me that she had hinted at the +possible necessity of sending for me at no distant period, and I +remembered the fact too well to need the reminder. + +'It was nearly midnight when we drove down the Rue St. Denis, turned +into La Reynie Ogniard, and drew up at the antiquated door I had once +entered nearly three months earlier. We entered as before, rang the bell +as before, and were admitted into the inner room by the same slattern +girl. I remember at this moment one impression which this person made +upon me--that she did not wash so often as four times a year, and that +the _same old dirt_ was upon her face that had been crusted there at the +time of my previous visit. There seemed no change in the room, except +that _two_ tapers, and each larger than the one I had previously seen, +were burning upon the table. The curtain was down, as before, and when +it suddenly rose, after a few minutes spent in waiting, and the +blood-red woman stood in the vacant space, all seemed so exactly as it +had done on the previous visit, that it would have been no difficult +matter to believe the past three months a mere imagination, and this the +same first visit renewed. + +'The illusion, such as it was, did not last long, however. The sorceress +fixed her eyes full upon me, with the red flame seeming to play through +the eyeballs as it had before done through her cheeks, and said, in a +voice lower, more sad and broken, than it had been when addressing me on +the previous occasion: + +''Young American, I have sent for you, and you have done well to come. +Do not fear----' + +''I do _not_ fear--you, or any one!' I answered, a little piqued that +she should have drawn any such impression from my appearance. I may have +been uttering a fib of magnificent proportions at the moment, but one +has a right to deny cowardice to the last gasp, whatever else he must +admit. + +''You do not? It is well, then!' she said in reply, and in the same low, +sad voice. 'You will have courage, then, perhaps, to see what I will +show you from the land of shadows.' + +''Whom does it concern?' I asked. 'Myself, or some other?' + +''Yourself, and many others--all the world!' uttered the lips of flame. +'It is of your country that I would show you.' + +''My country? God of heaven! What has happened to my country?' broke +from my lips almost before I knew what I was uttering. I suppose the +words came almost like a groan, for I had been deeply anxious over the +state of affairs known to exist at home, and perhaps I can be nearer to +a weeping child when I think of any ill to my own beloved land, than I +could be for any other evil threatened in the world. + +''But a moment more and you shall see!' said the sorceress. Then she +added: 'You have a friend here present. Shall he too look on what I have +to reveal, or will you behold it alone?' + +''Let him see!' I answered. 'My native land may fall into ruin, but she +can never be ashamed!' + +''So let it be, then!' said the sorceress, solemnly. 'Be silent, look, +and learn what is at this moment transpiring in your own land!' + +'Beneath that adjuration I was silent, and the same dread stillness fell +upon my companion. Suddenly the sorceress, still standing in the same +place, waved her right hand in the air, and a strain of low, sad music, +such as the harps of angels may be continually making over the descent +of lost spirits to the pit of suffering, broke upon my ears. Von Berg +too heard it, I know, for I saw him look up in surprise, then apply his +fingers to his ears and test whether his sense of hearing had suddenly +become defective. Whence that strain of music could have sprung I did +not know, nor do I know any better at this moment. I only know that, to +my senses and those of my companion, it was definite as if the thunders +of the sky had been ringing. + +'Then came another change, quite as startling as the music and even more +difficult to explain. The room began to fill with a whitish mist, +transparent in its obscurity, that wrapped the form of the sybil and +finally enveloped her until she appeared to be but a shade. Anon another +and larger room seemed to grow in the midst, with columned galleries and +a rostrum, and hundreds of forms in wild commotion, moving to and fro, +though uttering no sound. At one moment it seemed that I could look +through one of the windows of the phantom building, and I saw the +branches of a palmetto-tree waving in the winter wind. Then amidst and +apparently at the head of all, a white-haired man stood upon the +rostrum, and as he turned down a long scroll from which he seemed to be +reading to the assemblage, I read the words that appeared on the top of +the scroll: 'An ordinance to dissolve the compact heretofore existing +between the several States of the Federal Union, under the name of the +United States of America.' My breath came thick, my eyes filled with +tears of wonder and dismay, and I could see no more. + +''Horror!' I cried. 'Roll away the vision, for it is false! It can not +be that the man lives who could draw an ordinance to dissolve the Union +of the United States of America!' + +''It is so! That has this day been done!' spoke the voice of the +sorceress from within the cloud of white mist. + +''If this is indeed true,' I said, 'show me what is the result, for the +heavens must bow if this work of ruin is accomplished!' + +''Look again, then!' said the voice. The strain of music, which had +partially ceased for a moment, grew louder and sadder again, and I saw +the white mist rolling and changing as if a wind were stirring it. +Gradually again it assumed shape and form; and in the moonlight, before +the Capitol of the nation, its white proportions gleaming in the wintry +ray, the form of Washington stood, the hands clasped, the head bare, +and the eyes cast upward in the mute agony of supplication. + +''All is not lost!' I shouted more than spoke, 'for the Father of his +Country still watches his children, and while he lives in the heavens +and prays for the erring and wandering, the nation may yet be +reclaimed.' + +''It may be so,' said the voice through the mist, 'for look!' + +'Again the strain of music sounded, but now louder and clearer and +without the tone of hopeless sadness. Again the white mists rolled by in +changing forms, and when once more they assumed shape and consistency I +saw great masses of men, apparently in the streets of a large city, +throwing out the old flag from roof and steeple, lifting it to heaven in +attitudes of devotion, and pressing it to their lips with those wild +kisses which a mother gives to her darling child when it has been just +rescued from a deadly peril. + +''The nation lives!' I shouted. 'The old flag is not deserted and the +patriotic heart yet beats in American bosoms! Show me yet more, for the +next must be triumph!' + +''Triumph indeed!' said the voice. 'Behold it and rejoice at it while +there is time!' I shuddered at the closing words, but another change in +the strain of music roused me. It was not sadness now, nor yet the +rising voice of hope, for martial music rung loudly and clearly, and +through it I heard the roar of cannon and the cries of combatants in +battle. As the vision cleared, I saw the armies of the Union in tight +with a host almost as numerous as themselves, but savage, ragged, and +tumultuous, and bearing a mongrel flag that I had never seen before--one +that seemed robbed from the banner of the nation's glory. For a moment +the battle wavered and the forces of the Union seemed driven backward; +then they rallied with a shout, and the flag of stars and stripes was +rebaptized in glory. They pressed the traitors backward at every +turn--they trod rebellion under their heels--they were every where, and +every where triumphant. + +''Three cheers for the Star-Spangled Banner!' I cried, forgetting place +and time in the excitement of the scene. 'Let the world look on and +wonder and admire! I knew the land that the Fathers founded and +Washington guarded could not die! Three cheers--yes, nine--for the +Star-Spangled Banner and the brave old land over which it floats!' + +''Pause!' said the voice, coming out once more from the cloud of white +mist, and chilling my very marrow with the sad solemnity of its tone. +'Look once again!' I looked, and the mists went rolling by as before, +while the music changed to wild discord; and when the sight became clear +again I saw the men of the nation struggling over bags of gold and +quarreling for a black shadow that flitted about in their midst, while +cries of want and wails of despair went up and sickened the heavens! I +closed my eyes and tried to close my ears, but I could not shut out the +voice of the sorceress, saying once more from her shroud of white mist: + +''Look yet again, and for the last time! Behold the worm that gnaws away +the bravery of a nation and makes it a prey for the spoiler!' +Heart-brokenly sad was the music now, as the vision changed once more, +and I saw a great crowd of men, each in the uniform of an officer of the +United States army, clustered around one who seemed to be their chief. +But while I looked I saw one by one totter and fall, and directly I +perceived that _the epaulette or shoulder-strap on the shoulder of each +was a great hideous yellow worm, that gnawed away the shoulder and +palsied the arm and ate into the vitals_. Every second, one fell and +died, making frantic efforts to tear away the reptile from its grasp, +but in vain. Then the white mists rolled away, and I saw the strange +woman standing where she had been when the first vision began. She was +silent, the music was hushed, Adolph Von Berg had fallen hack asleep in +his chair, and drawing out my watch, I discovered that only ten minutes +had elapsed since the sorceress spoke her first word. + +''You have seen all--go!' was her first and last interruption to the +silence. The instant after, the curtain fell. I kicked Von Berg to awake +him, and we left the house. The _coupe_ was waiting in the street and +set me down at my lodgings, after which it conveyed my companion to his. +Adolph did not seem to have a very clear idea of what had occurred, and +my impression is, that he went to sleep the moment the first strain of +music commenced. + +'As for myself, I am not much clearer than Adolph as to how and why I +saw and heard what I know that I did see and hear. I can only say that +on that night of the twentieth December, 1860, the same on which, as it +afterward appeared, the ordinance of secession was adopted at +Charleston, I, in the little old two-story house in the Rue la Reynie +Ogniard, witnessed what I have related. What may be the omens, you may +judge as well as myself. How much of the sybil's prophecy is already +history, you know already. That SHOULDER-STRAPS, which I take to be _the +desire of military show without courage or patriotism_, are destroying +the armies of the republic, I am afraid there is no question. Perhaps +you can imagine why at the moment of hearing that there was a worm on my +shoulder for a shoulder-strap, I for the instant believed that it was +one of the hideous yellow monsters that I saw devouring the best +officers of the nation, and shrunk and shrieked like a whipped child. Is +not that a long story?' Martin concluded, lighting a fresh cigar and +throwing himself back from the table. + +'Very long, and a little mad; but to me absorbingly interesting,' was my +reply, 'And in the hope that it may prove so to others, I shall use it +as a strange, rambling introduction to a recital of romantic events +which have occurred in and about the great city since the breaking out +of the rebellion, having to do with patriotism and cowardice, love, +mischief, and secession, and bearing the title thus suggested.' + +A part of which stipulation is hereby kept, with the promise of the +writer that the remainder shall be faithfully fulfilled in forthcoming +numbers. + + + + +THE CHILDREN IN THE WOOD. + + Tell us--poor gray-haired children that we are-- + Tell us some story of the days afar, + Down shining through the years like sun and star. + + The stories that, when we were very young, + Like golden beads on lips of wisdom hung, + At fireside told or by the cradle sung. + + Not Cinderella with the tiny shoe, + Nor Harsan's carpet that through distance flew, + Nor Jack the Giant-Killer's derring-do. + + Not even the little lady of the Hood, + But something sadder--easier understood-- + The ballad of the Children in the Wood. + + Poor babes! the cruel uncle lives again, + To whom their little voices plead in vain-- + Who sent them forth to be by ruffians slain. + + The hapless agent of the guilt is here-- + From whose seared heart their pleading brought a tear-- + Who could not strike, but fled away in fear. + + And hand in hand the wanderers, left alone, + Through the dense forest make their feeble moan, + Fed on the berries--pillowed on a stone. + + Still hand in hand, till little feet grow sore, + And fails the feeble strength their limbs that bore; + Then they lie down, and feel the pangs no more. + + The stars shine down in pity from the sky; + The night-bird marks their fate with plaintive cry; + The dew-drop wets their parched lips ere they die. + + There clasped they lie--death's poor, unripened sheaves-- + Till the red robin through the tree-top grieves, + And flutters down and covers them with leaves. + + 'Tis an old legend, and a touching one: + What then? Methinks beneath to-morrow's sun + Some deed as heartless will be planned and done. + + Children of older years and sadder fate + Will wander, outcasts, from the great world's gate, + And ne'er return again, though long they wait. + + Through wildering labyrinths that round them close, + In that heart-hunger disappointment knows, + They long may wander ere the night's repose. + + Their feeble voices through the dusk may call, + And on the ears of busy mortals fall, + But who will hear, save God above us all? + + Will wolfish Hates forego their evil work, + Nor Envy's vultures in the branches perk, + Nor Slander's snakes within the verdure lurk? + + And when at last the torch of life grows dim, + Shall sweet birds o'er them chant a burial-hymn, + Or decent pity veil the stiffening limb? + + Thrice happy they, if the old legend stand, + And they are left to wander hand in hand-- + Not driven apart by Eden's blazing brand! + + If, long before the lonely night comes on-- + By tempting berries wildered and withdrawn-- + One does not look and find the other gone; + + If something more of shame, and grief, and wrong + Than that so often told in nursery song, + To their sad history does not belong! + + O lonely wanderers in the great world's wood! + Finding the evil where you seek the good, + Often deceived and seldom understood-- + + Lay to your hearts the plaintive tale of old, + When skies grow threatening or when loves grow cold, + Or something dear is hid beneath the mold! + + For fates are hard, and hearts are very weak, + And roses we have kissed soon leave the cheek, + And what we are, we scarcely dare to speak. + + But something deeper, to reflective eyes, + To-day beneath the sad old story lies, + And all must read if they are truly wise. + + A nation wanders in the deep, dark night, + By cruel hands despoiled of half its might, + And half its truest spirits sick with fright. + + The world is step-dame--scoffing at the strife, + And black assassins, armed with deadly knife, + At every step lurk, striking at its life. + + Shall it be murdered in the gloomy wood? + Tell us, O Parent of the True and Good, + Whose hand for us the fate has yet withstood! + + Shall it lie down at last, all weak and faint, + Its blood dried up with treason's fever-taint, + And offer up its soul in said complaint? + + Or shall the omen fail, and, rooting out + All that has marked its life with fear and doubt, + The child spring up to manhood with a shout? + + So that in other days, when far and wide + Other lost children have for succor cried, + The one now periled may be help and guide? + + Father of all the nations formed of men, + So let it be! Hold us beneath thy ken, + And bring the wanderers to thyself again! + + Pity us all, and give us strength to pray, + And lead us gently down our destined way! + And this is all the children's lips can say. + + + + +NATIONAL UNITY. + + +Pride in the physical grandeur, the magnificent proportions of our +country, has for generations been the master passion of Americans. Never +has the popular voice or vote refused to sustain a policy which looked +to the enlargement of the area or increase of the power of the Republic. +To feel that so vast a river as the Mississippi, having such affluents +as the Missouri and the Ohio, rolled its course entirely through our +territory--that the twenty thousand miles of steamboat navigation on +that river and its tributaries were wholly our own, without touching on +any side our national boundaries--that the Pacific and the Atlantic, the +great lakes and the Gulf of Mexico, were our natural and conceded +frontiers, that their bays and harbors were the refuge of our commerce, +and their rising cities our marts and depots--were incense to our vanity +and stimulants to our love of country. No true American abroad ever +regarded or characterized himself as a New-Yorker, a Virginian, a +Louisianian: he dilated in the proud consciousness of his country's +transcendent growth and wondrous greatness, and confidently anticipated +the day when its flag should float unchallenged from Hudson's Bay to the +Isthmus of Darien, if not to Cape Horn. + +It was this strong instinct of Nationality which rendered the masses so +long tolerant, if not complaisant, toward Slavery and the Slave Power. +Merchants and bankers were bound to their footstool by other and +ignobler ties; but the yeomanry of the land regarded slavery with a +lenient if not absolutely favoring eye, because it existed in fifteen of +our States, and was cherished as of vital moment by nearly all of them, +so that any popular aversion to it evinced by the North, would tend to +weaken the bonds of our Union. It might _seem_ hard to Pomp, or Sambo, +or Cuffee, to toil all day in the rice-swamp, the cotton-field, to the +music of the driver's lash, with no hope of remuneration or release, nor +even of working out thereby a happier destiny for his children; but +after all, what was the happiness or misery of three or four millions of +stupid, brutish negroes, that it should be allowed to weigh down the +greatness and glory of the Model Republic? Must there not always be a +foundation to every grand and towering structure? Must not some grovel +that others may soar? Is not _all_ drudgery repulsive? Yet must it not +be performed? Are not negroes habitually enslaved by each other in +Africa? Does not their enslavement here secure an aggregate of labor and +production that would else be unattainable? Are we not enabled by it to +supply the world with Cotton and Tobacco and ourselves with Rice and +Sugar? In short, is not to toil on white men's plantations the negro's +true destiny, and Slavery the condition wherein he contributes most +sensibly, considerably, surely, to the general sustenance and comfort of +mankind? If it is, away with all your rigmarole declarations of 'the +inalienable Rights of Man'--the right of every one to life, liberty, and +the pursuit of happiness! Let us have a reformed and rationalized +political Bible, which shall affirm the equality of all _white_ +men--_their_ inalienable right to liberty, etc., etc. Thus will our +consistency be maintained, our institutions and usages stand justified, +while we still luxuriate on our home-grown sugar and rice, and deluge +the civilized world with our cheap cotton and tobacco!--And thus our +country--which had claimed a place in the family of nations as the +legitimate child and foremost champion of Human Freedom--was fast +sinking into the loathsome attitude of foremost champion and most +conspicuous exemplar of the vilest and most iniquitous form of +Despotism--that which robs the laborer of the just recompense of his +sweat, and dooms him to a life of ignorance, squalor, and despair. + +But + + 'The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices + Make whips to scourge us.' + +For two generations our people have cherished, justified, and pampered +slavery, not that they really loved, or conscientiously approved the +accursed 'institution,' but because they deemed its tolerance essential +to our National Unity; and now we find Slavery desperately intent on and +formidably armed for the destruction of that Unity: for two generations +we have aided the master to trample on and rob his despised slave; and +now we are about to call that slave to defend our National Unity against +that master's malignant treason, or submit to see our country shattered +and undone. + +Who can longer fail to realize that 'there is a God who judgeth in the +earth?' or, if the phraseology suit him better, that there is, in the +constitution of the universe, provision made for the banishment of every +injustice, the redress of every wrong? + +'Well,' says a late convert to the fundamental truth, 'we must drive the +negro race entirely from our country, or we shall never again have union +and lasting peace.' + +Ah! friend? it is not the negro _per se_ who distracts and threatens to +destroy our country--far from it! Negroes did not wrest Texas from +Mexico, nor force her into the Union, nor threaten rebellion because +California was admitted as a Free State, nor pass the Nebraska bill, nor +stuff the ballot-boxes and burn the habitations of Kansas, nor fire on +Fort Sumter, nor do any thing else whereby our country has been +convulsed and brought to the brink of ruin. It is not by the negro--it +is by injustice to the negro--that our country has been brought to her +present deplorable condition. Were Slavery and all its evil brood of +wrongs and vices eradicated this day, the Rebellion would die out +to-morrow and never have a successor. The centripetal tendency of our +country is so intense--the attraction of every part for every other so +overwhelming--that Disunion were impossible but for Slavery. What +insanity in New-Orleans to seek a divorce from the upper waters of her +superb river! What a melancholy future must confront St. Louis, +separated by national barriers from Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Colorado, +Nebraska, and all the vast, undeveloped sources of her present as well +as prospective commerce and greatness! Ponder the madness of Baltimore, +seeking separation from that active and teeming West to which she has +laid an iron track over the Alleghanies at so heavy a cost! But for +Slavery, the Southron who should gravely propose disunion, would at once +be immured in a receptacle for lunatics. He would find no sympathy +elsewhere. + +But a nobler idea, a truer conception, of National Unity, is rapidly +gaining possession of the American mind. It is that dimly foreshadowed +by our President when, in his discussions with Senator Douglas, he said: +'I do not think our country can endure half slave and half free. I do +not think it will be divided, but I think it will become all one or the +other.' + +'A union of lakes, a union of lands,' is well; but a true 'union of +hearts' must be based on a substantial identity of social habitudes and +moral convictions. If Islamism or Mormonism were the accepted religion +of the South, and we were expected to bow to and render at least outward +deference to it, there would doubtless be thousands of Northern-born men +who, for the sake of office, or trade, or in the hope of marrying +Southern plantations, would profess the most unbounded faith in the +creed of the planters, and would crowd their favorite temples located on +our own soil. But this would not be a real bond of union between us, but +merely an exhibition of servility and fawning hypocrisy. And so the +Northern complaisance toward slavery has in no degree tended to avert +the disaster which has overtaken us, but only to breed self-reproach on +the one side, and hauteur with ineffable loathing on the other. + +Hereafter National Unity is to be no roseate fiction, no gainful +pretense, but a living reality. The United States of the future will be +no constrained alliance of discordant and mutually repellent +commonwealths, but a true exemplification of 'many in one'--many stars +blended in one common flag--many States combined in one homogeneous +Nation. Our Union will be one of bodies not merely, but of souls. The +merchant of Boston or New-York will visit Richmond or Louisville for +tobacco, Charleston for rice, Mobile for cotton, New-Orleans for sugar, +without being required at every hospitable board, in every friendly +circle, to repudiate the fundamental laws of right and wrong as he +learned them from his mother's lips, his father's Bible, and pronounce +the abject enslavement of a race to the interests and caprices of +another essentially just and universally beneficent. That a Northern man +visiting the South commercially should suppress his convictions adverse +to 'the peculiar institution,' and profess to regard it with approval +and satisfaction, was a part of the common law of trade--if one were +hostile to Slavery, what right had he to be currying favor with planters +and their factors, and seeking gain from the products of slave-labor? So +queried 'the South;' and, if any answer were possible, that answer would +not be heard. 'Love slavery or quit the South,' was the inexorable rule; +and the resulting hypocrisy has wrought deep injury to the Northern +character. As manufacturers, as traders, as teachers, as clerks, as +political aspirants, most of our active, enterprising, leading classes +have been suitors in some form for Southern favor, and the consequence +has been a prevalent deference to Southern ideas and a constant +sacrifice of moral convictions to hopes of material advantage. + +It has pleased God to bring this demoralizing commerce to a sudden and +sanguinary close. Henceforth North and South will meet as equals, +neither finding or fancying in their intimate relations any reason for +imposing a profession of faith on the other. The Southron visiting the +North and finding here any law, usage, or institution revolting to his +sense of justice, will never dream of offending by frankly avowing and +justifying the impression it has made upon him: and so with the Northman +visiting the South. It is conscious wrong alone that shrinks from +impartial observation and repels unfavorable criticism as hostility. We +freely proffer our farms, our factories, our warehouses, common-schools, +alms-houses, inns, and whatever else may be deemed peculiar among us, to +our visitors' scrutiny and comment: we know they are not perfect, and +welcome any hint that may conduce to their improvement. So in the broad, +free West. The South alone resents any criticism on her peculiarities, +and repels as enmity any attempt to convince her that her forced labor +is her vital weakness and her greatest peril. + +This is about to pass away. Slavery, having appealed to the sword for +justification, is to be condemned at her chosen tribunal and to fall on +the weapon she has aimed at the heart of the Republic. A new relation of +North to South, based on equality, governed by justice, and conceding +the fullest liberty, is to replace fawning servility by manly candor, +and to lay the foundations of a sincere, mutual, and lasting esteem. We +already know that valor is an American quality; we shall yet realize +that Truth is every man's interest, and that whatever repels scrutiny +confesses itself unfit to live. The Union of the future, being based on +eternal verities, will be cemented by every year's duration, until we +shall come in truth to 'know no North, no South, no East, no West,' but +one vast and glorious country, wherein sectional jealousies and hatreds +shall be unknown, and every one shall rejoice in the consciousness that +he is a son and citizen of the first of Republics, the land of +Washington and Jefferson, of Adams, Hamilton, and Jay, wherein the +inalienable Rights of Man as Man, at first propounded as the logical +justification of a struggle for Independence, became in the next +century, and through the influence of another great convulsion, the +practical basis of the entire political and social fabric--the accepted, +axiomatic root of the National life. + + + + +WAS HE SUCCESSFUL? + + 'Do but grasp into the thick of human life! Everyone _lives_ it--to + not many is it _known_; and seize it where you will, it is + interesting.'--_Goethe_. + + 'SUCCESSFUL.--Terminating in accomplishing what is wished or + intended.'--_Webster's Dictionary_. + + +CHAPTER SEVENTH. + +HIRAM MEEKER VISITS MR. BURNS + +Mr. Burns had finished his breakfast. + +A horse and wagon, as was customary at that hour, stood outside the +gate. He himself was on the portico where his daughter had followed him +to give her father his usual kiss. At that moment Mr. Burns saw some one +crossing the street toward his place. As he was anxious not to be +detained, he hastened down the walk, so that if he could not escape the +stranger, the person might at least understand that he had prior +engagements. Besides, Mr. Burns never transacted business at home, and a +visitor at so early an hour must have business for an excuse. The +new-comer evidently was as anxious to reach the house before Mr. Burns +left it, as the latter was to make his escape, for pausing a moment +across the way, as if to make certain, the sight of the young lady +appeared to reassure him, and he walked over and had laid his hand upon +the gate just as Mr. Burns was attempting to pass out. + +Standing on opposite sides, each with a hand upon the paling, the two +met. It would have made a good picture. Mr. Burns was at this time a +little past forty, but his habit of invariable cheerfulness, his +energetic manner, and his fine fresh complexion gave him the looks of +one between thirty and thirty-five. On the contrary, although Hiram +Meeker was scarcely twenty, and had never had a care nor a thought to +perplex him, he at the same time possessed a certain experienced look +which made you doubtful of his age. If one had said he was twenty, you +would assent to the proposition; if pronounced to be thirty, you would +consider it near the mark. So, standing as they did, you would perceive +no great disparity in their ages. + +We are apt to fancy individuals whom we have never seen, but of whom we +hear as accomplishing much, older than they really are. In this instance +Hiram had pictured a person at least twenty years older than Mr. Burns +appeared to be. He was quite sure there could be no mistake in the +identity of the man whom he beheld descending the portico. When he saw +him at such close quarters he was staggered for a moment, but for a +moment only. 'It must be he,' so he said to himself. + +Now Hiram had planned his visit with special reference to meeting Mr. +Burns in his own house. He had two reasons for this. He knew that there +he should find him more at his ease, more off his guard, and in a state +of mind better adapted to considering his case socially and in a +friendly manner than in the counting-room. + +Again: Sarah Burns. He would have an opportunity to renew the +acquaintance already begun. + +Well, there they stood. Both felt a little chagrined--Mr. Burns that an +appointment was threatened to be interrupted, and Hiram that his plan +was in danger of being foiled. + +This was for an instant only. + +Mr. Burns opened the gate passing almost rapidly through, bowing at the +same time to Hiram. + +'Do you wish to see me?' he said, as he proceeded to untie the horse and +get into the wagon. + +'Mr. Joel Burns, I presume?' + +'Yes.' + +'I did wish to see you, sir, on matters of no consequence to you, but +personal to myself. I can call again.' + +'I am going down to the paper-mill to be absent for an hour. If you will +come to my office in that time, I shall be at liberty.' + +Hiram had a faint hope he would be invited to step into the house and +wait. Disappointed in this, he replied very modestly: 'Perhaps you will +permit me to ride with you--that is, unless some one else is going. I +would like much to look about the factories.' + +'Certainly. Jump in.' And away they drove to Slab City. + +Hiram was careful to make no allusion to the subject of his mission to +Burnsville. He remained modestly silent while Mr. Burns occasionally +pointed out an important building and explained its use or object. +Arriving at the paper-mill, he gave Hiram a brief direction where he +might spend his time most agreeably. + +'I shall be ready to return in three quarters of an hour,' he said, and +disappeared inside. + +'I must be careful, and make no mistakes with such a man,' soliloquized +Hiram, as he turned to pursue his walk. 'He is quick and rapid--a word +and a blow--too rapid to achieve a GREAT success. It takes a man, +though, to originate and carry through all this. Every thing flourishes +here, that is evident. Joel Burns ought to be a richer man than they say +he is. He has sold too freely, and on too easy terms, I dare say. No +doubt, come to get into his affairs, there will be ever so much to look +after. Too much a man of action. Does not think enough. Just the place +for me for two or three years.' + +Hiram had no time for special examination, but strolled about from point +to point, so as to gain a general impression of what was going on. Five +minutes before the time mentioned by Mr. Burns had elapsed, Hiram was at +his post waiting for him to come out. This little circumstance did not +pass unnoticed. It elicited a single observation, 'You are punctual;' to +which Hiram made no reply. The drive back to the village was passed +nearly in silence. Mr. Burns's mind was occupied with his affairs, and +Hiram thought best not to open his own business till he could have a +fair opportunity. + +Mr. Burns's place for the transaction of general business was a small +one-story brick building, erected expressly for the purpose, and +conveniently located. There was no name on the door, but over it a +pretty large sign displayed in gilt letters the word 'Office,' simply. +Mr. Burns had some time before discovered this establishment to be a +necessity, in consequence of the multitude of matters with which he was +connected. He was the principal partner in the leading store in the +village, where a large trade was carried on. The lumber business was +still good. He had always two or three buildings in course of erection. +He owned one half the paper-mill. In short, his interests were extensive +and various, but all snug and well-regulated, and under his control. For +general purposes, he spent a certain time in his office. Beyond that, he +could be found at the store, at the mill, in some of the factories, or +elsewhere, as the occasion called him. + +Driving up to the 'office,' he entered with Hiram, and pointing the +latter to a seat, took one himself and waited to hear what our hero had +to say. + +Hiram opened his case, coming directly to the point. He gave a brief +account of his previous education and business experience. At the +mention of Benjamin Jessup's name, an ominous 'humph!' escaped Mr. +Burns's lips, which Hiram was not slow to notice. He saw it would prove +a disadvantage to have come from his establishment. Without attempting +immediately to modify the unfavorable impression, he was careful, before +he finished, to take pains to do so. + +'I have thus explained to you,' concluded Hiram,'that my object is to +gain a full, thorough knowledge of business, with the hope of becoming, +in time, a well-informed and, I trust, successful merchant.' + +'And for that purpose--' + +'For that purpose, I am very desirous to enter your service.' + +'Really, I do not think there is a place vacant which would suit you, +Mr. Meeker.' + +'It is of little consequence whether or not the place would suit me, +sir; only let me have the opportunity, and I will endeavor to adapt +myself to it.' + +'Oh! what I mean is, we have at present no situation fitted for a young +man as old and as competent as you appear to be.' + +'But if I were willing to undertake it?' + +'You see there would be no propriety in placing you in a situation +properly filled by a boy, or at least a youth. Still, I will not forget +your request; and if occasion should require, you shall have the first +hearing.' + +'I had hoped,' continued Hiram, no way daunted, 'that possibly you might +have been disposed to take me in your private employ.' + +'How?' + +'You have large, varied, and increasing interests. You must be severely +tasked, at least at times, to properly manage all. Could I not serve you +as an assistant? You would find me, I think, industrious and +persevering. I bring certificates of character from the Rev. Mr. +Goddard, our clergyman, and from both the deacons in our church.' + +This was said with a naive earnestness, coupled with a diffidence +apparently _so_ genuine, that Mr. Burns could not but be favorably +impressed by it. In fact, the idea of a general assistant had never +before occurred to him. He reflected a moment, and replied: + +'It is true I have much on my hands, but one who has a great deal to do +can do a great deal; besides, the duties I undertake it would be +impossible to devolve on another.' + +'I wish you would give me a trial. The amount of salary would be no +object. I want to learn business, and I know I can learn it of _you_.' + +Mr. Burns was not insensible to the compliment. His features relaxed +into a smile, but his opinion remained unchanged. + +'Well,' said Hiram, in a pathetic tone, 'I hate to go back and meet +father. He said he presumed you had forgotten him, though he remembered +you when you lived in Sudbury, a young man about my age; and he told me +to make an engagement with you, if it were only as errand-boy.' + +[O Hiram! how could that glib and ready lie come so aptly to your lips? +Your father never said a word to you on the subject. It is doubtful if +he knew you were going to Burnsville at all, and he never had seen Mr. +Burns in his life. How carefully, Hiram, you calculated before you +resolved on this delicate method to secure your object! The risk of the +falsity of the whole ever being discovered--that was very remote, and +amounted to little. What you were about to say would injure no +one--wrong no one. If not true, it might well be true. Oh! but Hiram, do +you not see you are permitting an element of falsehood to creep in and +leaven your whole nature? You are exhibiting an utter disregard of +circumstances in your determination to carry your point. Heretofore you +have looked to but one end--self; but you have committed no overt act. +Have a care, Hiram Meeker; Satan is gaining on you.] + +Mr. Burns had not been favorably impressed, at first sight, with his +visitor. Magnetically he was repelled by him. He was too just a man to +allow this to influence him, by word or manner. He permitted Hiram to +accompany him to the mill and return with him. + +During this time, the latter had learned something of his man. He saw +quickly enough that he had failed favorably to impress Mr. Burns. +Determining not to lose the day, he assumed an entire ingenuousness of +character, coupled with much simplicity and earnestness. He appealed to +the certificates of his minister and the deacons, as if these would be +sure to settle the question irrespective of Mr. Burns's wants; and at +last the _lie_ slipped from his mouth, in appearance as innocently as +truth from the lips of an angel. + +At the mention of Sudbury and the time when he was a young man, Hiram, +who watched narrowly, thought he could perceive a slight quickening in +the eye of Mr. Burns--nothing more. + +His only reply, however, to the appeal, was to ask: + +'How old are you?' + +'Nineteen,' said Hiram softly. (He would be twenty the following week, +but he did not say so.) + +'Only nineteen!' exclaimed Mr. Burns, 'I took you for five-and-twenty.' + +'It is very singular,' replied Hiram mournfully; 'I am not aware that +persons generally think me older than I am.' + +'Oh! I presume not; and now I look closer, I do not think you _do_ +appear more than nineteen.' + +It was really astonishing how Hiram's countenance had changed. How every +trace of keen, shrewd apprehension had vanished, leaving only the +appearance of a highly intelligent and interesting, but almost diffident +youth! + +Mr. Burns sat a moment without speaking. Hiram did not dare utter a +word. He knew he was dealing with a man quick in his impressions and +rapid to decide. He had done his best, and would not venture farther. +Mr. Burns, looking up from a reflective posture, cast his eyes on Hiram. +The latter really appeared so amazingly distressed that Mr. Burns's +feelings were touched. + +'Is your mother living,' he asked. + +Hiram was almost on the point of denying the fact, but that would have +been too much. + +'Oh! yes, sir,' he replied. + +Again Mr. Burns was silent. Again Hiram calculated the chances, and +would not venture to interrupt him. + +This time Mr. Burns's thoughts took another direction. It occurred to +him that he had of late overtasked his daughter. 'True, it is a great +source of pleasure for us both that she can be of so much assistance to +me, but her duties naturally accumulate; she is doing too much. It is +not appropriate.' + +So thought Mr. Burns while Hiram Meeker sat waiting for a decision. + +'It is true,' continued Mr. Burns to himself, 'I think I ought to have a +private clerk. The idea occurred even to this youth. I will investigate +who and what he is, and will give him a trial if all is right.' + +He turned toward Hiram: + +'Young man, I am inclined to favor your request. But if I give you +employment in my _office_, your relations with me will necessarily be +confidential, and the situation will be one of trust and confidence. I +must make careful inquiries.' + +'Certainly, sir,' replied Hiram, drawing a long breath, for he saw the +victory was gained. 'I will leave these certificates, which may aid you +in your inquiries. I was born and brought up in Hampton, and you will +have no difficulty in finding persons who know my parents and me. When +shall I call again, sir?' + +'In a week.' + + * * * * * + +'Won! won! yes, won!' exclaimed Hiram aloud, when he had walked a +sufficient distance from the 'office' to enable him to do so without +danger of being overheard. 'A close shave, though! If he had said 'No,' +all Hampton would not have moved him. What a splendid place for me! How +did I come to be smart enough to suggest such a thing to him? I rather +think three years here will make me all right for New-York.' + +Hiram walked along to the hotel, and ordered dinner. While it was +getting ready, he strolled over the village. He was in hopes to meet, by +some accident, Miss Burns. + +He was not disappointed. Turning a corner, he came suddenly on Sarah, +who had run out for a call on some friend. Hiram fancied he had produced +a decided impression the evening they met at Mrs. Crofts', and with a +slight fluttering at the heart, he was about to stop and extend his +hand, when Miss Burns, hardly appearing to recognize him, only bowed +slightly and passed on her way. + +'You shall pay for this, young lady,' muttered Hiram between his +teeth--'you shall pay for this, or my name is not Hiram Meeker! I would +come here now for nothing else but to pull _her_ down!' continued Hiram +savagely. 'I will let her know whom she has to deal with.' + +He walked back to the hotel in a state of great irritation. With the +sight of a good dinner, however, this was in a degree dispelled, and +before he finished it, his philosophy came to his relief. + +'Time--time--it takes time. The fact is, I shall like the girl all the +better for her playing _off_ at first. Shan't forget it though--not +quite!' + +He drove back to Hampton that afternoon. His feelings were placid and +complacent as usual. He had asked the Lord in the morning to prosper his +journey and to grant him success in gaining his object, and he now +returned thanks for this new mark of God's grace and favor. + + * * * * * + +Mr. Burns did not inquire of the Rev. Mr. Goddard, nor of either of the +deacons mentioned by Hiram. He wrote direct to Thaddeus Smith, Senior, +whom he knew, and who he thought would be able to give a correct account +of Hiram. Informing Mr. Smith that the young man had applied to him for +a situation of considerable trust, he asked that gentleman to give his +careful opinion about his capacity, integrity, and general character. As +there could be but one opinion on the subject in all Hampton, Mr. Smith +returned an answer every way favorable. It is true he did not like Hiram +himself, but if called on for a reason, he could not have told why. As +we have recorded, every one spoke well of him. Every one said how good, +and moral, and smart he was, and honest Mr. Smith reported accordingly. + +'Well, well,' said Mr. Burns, 'if Smith gives such an account of him +while he has been all the time in an opposition store, he must be all +right.... Don't quite like his looks, though ... wonder what it is.' + + * * * * * + +When at the expiration of the week Hiram went to receive an answer from +Mr. Burns, he did not attempt to find him at his house. He was careful +to call at the office at the hour Mr. Burns was certain to be in. + +'I hear a good account of you, Meeker,' said Mr. Burns, 'and in that +respect every thing is satisfactory. Had I not given you so much +encouragement, I should still hesitate about making a new department. +However, we will try it.' + +'I am very thankful to you, sir. As I said, I want to learn business and +the compensation is no object.' + +'But it _is_ an object with me. I can have no one in my service who is +not fully paid. Your position should entitle you to a liberal salary. If +you can not earn it, you can not fill the place.' + +'Then I shall try to earn it, I assure you,' replied Hiram, 'and will +leave the matter entirely with you. I have brought you a line from my +father,' he continued, and he handed Mr. Burns a letter. + +It contained a request, prepared at Hiram's suggestion, that Mr. Burns +would admit him in his family. The other ran his eye hastily over it. A +slight frown contracted his brow. + +'Impossible!' he exclaimed. 'My domestic arrangements will not permit of +such a thing. Quite impossible.' + +'So I told father, but he said it would do no harm to write. He did not +think you would be offended.' + +'Offended! certainly not.' + +'Perhaps,' continued Hiram, 'you will be kind enough to recommend a good +place to me. I should wish to reside in a religious family, where no +other boarders are taken.' + +The desire was a proper one, but Hiram's tone did not have the ring of +the true metal. It grated slightly on Mr. Burns's moral nerves--a little +of his first aversion came back--but he suppressed it, and promised to +endeavor to think of a place which should meet Hiram's wishes. It was +now Saturday. It was understood Hiram should commence his duties the +following Monday. This arranged, he took leave of his employer, and +returned home. + +That evening Mr. Burns told his daughter he was about to relieve her +from the drudgery--daily increasing--of copying letters and taking care +of so many papers, by employing a confidential clerk. Sarah at first was +grieved; but when her father declared he should talk with her just as +ever about every thing he did or proposed to do, and that he thought in +the end the new clerk would be a great relief to him, she was content. + +'But whom have you got, father,' (she always called him 'father,') 'for +so important a situation?' + +'His name is Meeker--Hiram Meeker--a young man very highly recommended +to me from Hampton.' + +'I wonder if it was not he whom I met last Saturday!' + +'Possibly; he called on me that day. Do you know him?' + +'I presume it is the same person I saw at Mrs. Crofts' some weeks since. +Last Saturday a young man met me and almost stopped, as if about to +speak. I did not recognize him, although I could not well avoid bowing. +Now I feel quite sure it was Mr. Meeker.' + +'Very likely.' + +'Well, I do hope he will prove faithful and efficient. I recollect every +one spoke very highly of him.' + +'I dare say.' + +Mr. Burns was in a reverie. Certain thoughts were passing through his +mind--painful, unhappy thoughts--thoughts which had never before visited +him. + +'Sarah, how old are you?' + +'Why, father, what a question!' She came and sat on his knee and looked +fondly into his eyes. 'What _can_ you be thinking of not to remember I +am seventeen?' + +'Of course I remember it, dear child,' replied Mr. Burns tenderly; 'my +mind was wandering, and I spoke without reflection.' + +'But you were thinking of me?' + +'Perhaps.' + +He kissed her, and rose and walked slowly up and down the room. Still he +was troubled. + +We shall not at present endeavor to penetrate his thoughts; nor is it +just now to our purpose to present them to the reader. + + * * * * * + +Hiram Meeker had been again _successful_. He had resolved to enter the +service of Mr. Burns and he _had_ entered it. He came over Monday +morning early, and put up at the hotel. In three or four days he secured +just the kind of boarding-place he was in search of. A very respectable +widow lady, with two grown-up daughters, after consulting with Mr. +Burns, did not object to receive him as a member of her family. + + + + +AN ARMY CONTRACTOR. + + + Lived a man of iron mold, + Crafty glance and hidden eye, + Dead to every gain but gold, + Deaf to every human sigh. + Man he was of hoary beard, + Withered cheek and wrinkled brow. + Imaged on his soul, appeared: + 'Honest as the times allow.' + + + + +LITERARY NOTICES. + + + WHY PAUL FERROLL KILLED HIS WIFE. By the Author of Paul + Ferroll. New-York: Carleton, 413 Broadway. Boston: N. Williams & + Co. + +Those who remember _Paul Ferroll_, probably recall it as a novel of +merit, which excited attention, partly from its peculiarity, and partly +from the mystery in which its writer chose to conceal herself--a not +unusual course with timid debutantes in literature, who hope either to +_intriguer_ the public with their masks, or quietly escape the disgrace +of a _fiasco_ should they fail. Mrs. Clive is, however, it would seem, +satisfied that the public did not reject her, since she now reaeppears to +inform us, 'novelly,' why the extremely ill-married Paul made himself +the chief of sinners, by committing wife-icide. The work is in fact a +very readable novel--much less killing indeed than its title--but still +deserving the great run which we are informed it is having, and which, +unlike the run of shad, will not we presume--as it is a very summer +book--fall off as the season advances. + + + THE CHANNINGS. A Domestic Novel of Real Life. By Mrs. + Henry Wood. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson. Boston: Crosby and + Nichols. + +Notwithstanding the praise which has been so lavishly bestowed on this +'tale of domestic life,' the reader will, if any thing more than a mere +reader of novels for the very sake of 'story,' probably agree with us, +after dragging through to the end, that it would be a blessing if some +manner of stop could be put to the manufacture of such books. A really +_original_, earnest novel; vivid in its life-picturing, genial in its +characters; the book of a man or woman who has thought something, and +actually _knows_ something, is at any time a world's blessing. But what +has _The Channings_ of all this in it? Every sentence in it rings like +something read of old, all the incidents are of a kind which were worn +out years ago--to be sure the third-rate story-reader may lose himself +in it--just as we may for a fiftieth time endeavor to trace out the plan +of the Hampton Labyrinth, and with about as much real profit or +amusement. + +It is a melancholy sign of the times to learn that such hackneyed +English trash as _The Channings_ has sold well! It has not deserved it. +American novels which have appeared nearly cotemporaneously with it, and +which have ten times its merit, have not met with the same success, for +the simple and sole reason that almost any English circulating library +stuff will at any time meet with better patronage than a home work. When +our public becomes as much interested in itself as it is in the very +common-place life of Cockney clergymen and clerks, we shall perhaps +witness a truly generous encouragement of native literature. + + + THE PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND. A Story of the Coast of Maine. + By Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. + +In reading this quiet, natural, well-pictured narrative of Northern +life, we are tempted to exclaim--fresh from the extraordinary contrast +presented by _Agnes of Sorrento--O si sic omnes!_ Why can not Mrs. Stowe +_always_ write like this? Why not limit her efforts to subjects which +develop her really fine powers--to setting forth the social life of +America at the present day, instead of harping away at the seven times +worn out and knotted cord of Catholic and Italian romance? _The Pearl of +Orr's Island_, though not a work which will sweep Uncle Tom-like in +tempest fashion over all lands and through all languages, is still a +very readable and very refreshing novel--full of reality as we find it +among real people, 'inland or on sounding shore,' and by no means +deficient in those moral and religious lessons to inculcate which it +appears to have been written. Piety is indeed the predominant +characteristic of the work--not obtrusive or sectarian, but earnest and +actual; so that it will probably be classed, on the whole, as a +religious novel, though we can hardly recall a romance in which the +pious element interferes so little with the general interest of the +plot, or is so little conducive to gloom. The hard, '_Angular_ Saxon' +characteristics of the rural people who constitute the _dramatis +personae_, their methods of thought and tone of feeling, so singularly +different from that of 'the world,' their marked peculiarities, are all +set forth with an apparently unconscious ability deserving the highest +praise. + + + THE GOLDEN HOUR. By MONOURE D. CONWAY, Author of + the 'Rejected Stone,' '_Impera Parendo_.' Boston: Ticknor and + Fields. + +The most remarkable work which the war has called out is beyond question +the _Rejected Stone_. Wild, vigorous, earnest, even to suffering, honest +as truth itself, quaint, humorous, pathetic, and startlingly eccentric. +Those who read it at once decided that a new writer had arisen among us, +and one destined to make no mean mark in the destinies of his country. +The reader who will refer to our first number will find what we said of +it in all sincerity, since the author was then to us unknown. He is--it +is almost needless to inform the reader--a thorough-going abolitionist, +yet one who, while looking more intently at the welfare of the black +than we care to do in the present imbroglio, still appreciates and urges +Emancipation, or freeing the black, in its relation to the welfare of +the white man. Mr. Conway is not, however, a man who speaks ignorantly +on this subject. A Virginian born and bred, brought up in the very heart +of the institution, he studied it at home in all its relations, and +found out its evils by experience. A thoroughly honest man, too +clear-headed and far too intelligent to be rated as a fanatic; too +familiar with his subject to be at all disregarded, he claims close +attention in many ways, those of wit and eloquence not being by any +means the least. In the work before us, he insists that there is a +golden hour at hand, a title borrowed from the quaint advertisement, of +'Lost a golden hour set with sixty diamond minutes'--which if not +grasped at by the strong, daring hand will see our great national +opportunity lost forever. We are not such disbelievers in fate as to +imagine that this golden hour ever can be inevitably lost. If the cause +of freedom rolls slowly, it is because even in free soil there are too +many Conservative pebbles. Still we agree with Conway as to his estimate +of the great mass of cowardice, irresolution, and folly which react on +our administration. If the word 'Emancipationist,'--meaning thereby one +who looks to the welfare of the _white_ man rather than the negro--be +substituted for 'Abolitionist' in the following, our more intelligent +readers will probably agree with Mr. Conway exactly: + + 'If this country is to be saved, the Abolitionists are to save it; + and though they seem few in numbers, they are not by a thousandth + so few as were the Christians when JESUS suffered, or Protestants + when Luther spoke. There is need only that we should stand as one + man, and unto the end, for an absolutely free Republic, swearing to + promote eternal strife until it be attained--until in waters which + Agitation, the angel of freedom, has troubled, the diseased nation + shall bathe and be made every whit whole. + + 'The Golden Hour is before us: there is in America enough wisdom + and courage to coin it, ere it passes, into national honor and + peace, if it is all put forth. + + 'Up, hearts!' + +It is needless to say that we earnestly commend this book to all who +are truly interested in the great questions of the time. + + + TRAGEDY OF SUCCESS. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. + +Another of the extraordinary series bearing the motto, '_Aux plus +desheritees le plus d'amour_'--works as strongly marked by talent as by +misapplied taste. The dramatic ability, the deep vein of poetry, the +earnest thought, faith, and humanity of these dramas or drama, are +beyond question--but very questionable to our mind is the extreme love +of over-adorning truth which can induce a writer to represent plantation +negroes as speaking elegant language and using lofty, tender, and poetic +sentiments on almost all occasions, or at least to a degree which is +exceptional and not regular. If we hope that the time may come when all +of GOD'S children will be raised to this high standard of +thought and culture, so much the more reason is there why they should +not now be exaggerated and placed in a false light. Yet, as we have +said, the work abounds in noble thoughts and true poetry. It may be read +with somewhat more than 'profit,' for it has within it a great and +loving heart. True _humanity_ is impressed on every page, and where that +exists greatness and beauty are never absent. + + + THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME. By VICTOR HUGO. + New-York: Dick and Fitzgerald. 1862. + +Many years ago--say some thirty-odd--when French literature still walked +in the old groves, and the classic form and style of the old revolution +still swayed all the minor minds, there sprung up a reaection in the +so-called romantic school of which Victor Hugo became the leader. The +medieval renaissance, which fifty years before had penetrated Germany +and England, and indeed all the North, was late in coming to France, but +when it did come it stirred the Latin Quarter and Young France +wonderfully. If its results were less remarkable in literature than in +any other country, they were at least more admired in their day. +Principal among these results was the novel now before us. And this book +is really a tolerable imitation of Walter Scott. The feverish spirit of +modern France craved, indeed, stronger ingredients than the Wizard of +the North was wont to gather, and the _Hunchback_ is accordingly +'sensational.' It has in fact been called extravagant--yes, forced and +unnatural. Even ordinary readers were apt to say as much of it. We well +remember meeting many years ago in a well-thumbed circulating-library +copy of the _Hunchback of Notre Dame_ the following doggerel on the last +page: + + 'In Paris when to the Greve you go, + Pray do not grieve if VICTOR HUGO + Should there be hanging by a rope, + Without the blessing of the Pope, + Or that of any human creature + On him who libels human nature.' + +Yet we counsel all who would be well-informed in literature--as well as +the far greater number of those who read only for entertainment, to get +this work. It is exciting--full of strange, quaint picturing of the +Middle Ages, has vivid characters, and is full of life. Among the series +of books with fewer faults, but, alas! with far fewer excellencies, +which are daily printed, there is, after all, seldom one so well worth +reading as _The Hunchback of Notre Dame_. + + + + +EDITOR'S TABLE. + + +At last we are wide awake. At last the nation has found out its +strength, and determined, despite doughface objections and impediments +to every proposal of every kind, to push the war with energy, so that +the foe _shall_ be overwhelmed. Six hundred thousand men, as we write, +will soon swell the ranks of the Federal army, and if six hundred +thousand more are needed they can be had. For the North is arming in +real earnest, thank God! and when it rises in _all_ its force, who shall +withstand it? It is a thing to remember with pride, that the +proclamation calling for the second three hundred thousand by draft, was +received with the same joy as though we had heard of a great victory. + +Government has not gone to work one day too soon. From a rebellion, the +present cause of strife has at length assumed the proportion of equal +war. The South has cast its _whole_ population, all its means, all its +energy, heart and soul, life and future, on one desperate game; while we +with every advantage have let out our strength little by little, so as +to hurt the enemy as little as possible. Doughface democracy among us +has squalled as if receiving deadly wounds at every proposal to crush or +injure the foe. It opposed, heart and soul, the early On to Richmond +movement, when the Republicans clamored for an overwhelming army, a +grand rally, and a bold push. It rejoiced at heart over Bull Run--for +the South was saved for a time. It upheld the wounded snake, 'anaconda' +system, it opposed the using of contrabands in any way, it urged, heart +and soul, the protection of the property of rebels, it warred on +confiscation in any form, it was ready with a negative to every +proposition to energetically push the war, and finally its press is now +opposing the settling our soldiers on the cotton-lands of the South. +Thus far the slow course of this war of ten millions against twenty +millions is the history of the action of falsehood and treason benumbing +the majority. They have lied against us, and against millions, that the +negro was all we cared for, though it was the WHITE MAN, far, far above +the black for whom we spoke and cared, or how else could that _free_ +labor in which the black is but a small unit have been our principal +hope and thought? + +But treason at home could not last forever, nor will lies always endure. +The people have found out that the foe _can not_ be gently whipped and +amiably reinstated in their old place of honor. Moreover we have no time +to lose. Another year will find us financially bankrupt, and the enemy +in all probability, in that case, free and fairly afloat by foreign aid. + +And if the South goes, _all_ may possibly go. In every city exist +desperate and unprincipled men--the FERNANDO WOODS of the +dangerous classes--who to rule would do all in their power to break our +remaining union into hundreds of small independencies. The South would +flood us with smuggled European goods--for, be it remembered, this +iniquitous device to beat down our manufacture has always been prominent +on their programme--our industry would be paralyzed, exchanges ruined, +and the Eastern and Middle States become paltry shadows of what they +once were. + +The people have at last seen this terrible ghost stare them full in the +face. They have found out that it is 'rule or ruin' in earnest. No time +now to have every decisive and expedient measure yelled down as +'unconstitutional' or undemocratic or unprecedented. No days these to +fight a maddened foe with conservative kid-gloves and frighten the fell +tiger back with democratic rose-water. We must do all and every thing, +even as the foe have done. We have been generous, we have been +merciful--we have protected property, we have returned slaves, we have +let our wounded lie in the open air and die rather than offend the +fiendish-hearted women of Secessia--and what have we got by it? Lies and +lies, again and yet again. For refusing to touch the black, Mr. Lincoln +is termed by the Southern press 'a dirty negro-stealer,' and our troops, +for _not_ taking the slaves and thereby giving the South all its present +crop and for otherwise aiding them, are simply held up as hell-hounds +and brigands. Much we have made by forbearance! + +The miserable position held by Free State secessionists, Breckinridge +Democrats, rose-water conservatives, and other varieties of the great +Northern branch of Southern treason, is fully exemplified by the +following extract from Breckinridge's special organ, the Louisville +_Courier_, printed while Nashville was still under rebel rule, an +article which has been of late more than once closely reechoed and +imitated by the Richmond _Whig_. + + 'This,' says the _Courier_, 'has been called a fratricidal war by + some, by others an irrepressible conflict between freedom and + slavery. We respectfully take issue with the authors of both these + ideas. We are not the brothers of the Yankees, and the slavery + question is merely the _pretext, not the cause of the war_. The + true irrepressible conflict lies fundamentally in the hereditary + hostility, the sacred animosity, the eternal antagonism, between + the two races engaged. + + 'The Norman cavalier can not brook the vulgar familiarity of the + Saxon Yankee, while the latter is continually devising some plan to + bring down his aristocratic neighbor to his own detested level. + Thus was the contest waged in the old United States. So long as + _Dickinson dough-faces were to be bought_, and _Cochrane cowards to + be frightened_, so long was the Union tolerable to Southern men; + but when, owing to divisions in our ranks, the Yankee hirelings + placed one of their own spawn over us, political connection became + unendurable, and separation necessary to preserve our + _self-respect_. + + 'As our Norman friends in England, always a minority, have ruled + their Saxon countrymen in political vassalage up to the present + day, so have we, the slave oligarchs, governed the Yankees till + within a twelve-month. We framed the Constitution, for seventy + years molded the policy of the Government, and placed our own men, + or '_Northern men with Southern principles_,' in power.' + +Cool--and in part true. They _did_ rule us in political vassalage, they +_did_ place their own men, or 'Northern men with Southern principles,' +in power, and there are scores of such abandoned traitors even now +crying out 'pro-slavery' and abusing Emancipation among us, in the hope +that if some turn of Fortune's wheel should separate the South, they may +again rise to power as its agents and representatives! GOD help them! It +is hard to conceive of men sunk so low! Nobody wants them now--but a +time _may_ come. They are in New-York--there is a peculiarly +contemptible clique of them in Boston, and the Philadelphia _Bulletin_ +informs us that there is exactly such another precious party in the city +of Brotherly Love, who are 'in a very awkward position just now, +inasmuch as there is no market for them. They are in the position of +Johnson and Don Juan in the slave-market at Constantinople, and ready to +exclaim: + + 'I wish to G--d that some body would buy us!'' + +The first draft for the army was a death-blow to the slow-poison +democracy, and it has been frightened accordingly. Like a slug on whom +salt has just begun to fall, the crawling mass is indeed manifesting +symptoms of frightened activity--but it is the activity of death. For +the North is awake in real earnest; it is out with banner and bayonet; +there is to be no more playing at war or wasting of lives--the foe is to +be rooted out--_delanda est Dixie_. And in the hour of triumph where +will the pro-slavery traitors be then? Where? Where they always strive +to be--on the _winning_ side. They will 'back water' as they have done +on progressive measure which they once opposed, since the war begun; +they will eat their words and fawn and wheedle those in power until the +opportunity again occurs for building up on some sham principle a party +of rum and faro-banks, low demagogue-ism, ignorance, reaction, and +vulgarity. Then from his present toad-like swelling and whispering, we +shall hear the full-expanded fiend roar out into a real life. It is the +old story of history--the corrupt and venal arraigning itself against +truth and terming the latter 'visionary' and 'fanatical.' + + * * * * * + +Those who visit the sick soldiers and do good in the hospitals +occasionally get a gleam of fun among all the sad scenes--for any wag +who has been to the wars seldom loses his humor, although he may have +lost all else save that and honor. Witness a sketch from life: + + +A LITTLE HEAVY. + +C----, good soul, after taking all the little comforts he could afford +to give to the wounded soldiers, went into the hospital for the fortieth +time the other day, with his mite, consisting of several papers of +fine-cut chewing-tobacco, Solace for the wounded, as he called it. He +came to one bed, where a poor fellow lay cheerfully humming a tune, and +studying out faces on the papered wall. + +'Got a fever?' asked C----. + +'No,' answered the soldier. + +'Got a cold?' + +'Yes, cold--lead--like the d----l!' + +'Where?' + +'Well, to tell you the truth, it's pretty well scattered. First, there's +a bullet in my right arm, they han't dug that out yet. Then there's one +near my thigh--it's sticking in yet: one in my leg--hit the bone--_that_ +fellow _hurts_! one through my left hand--that fell out. And I tell you +what, friend, with all this lead in me, I feel, ginrally speaking, _a +little heavy all over_!' + +C---- lightened his woes with a double quantity of Solace. + + * * * * * + +C---- was a good fellow, and the soldier deserved his 'Solace.' Many of +them among us are poor indeed. 'Boys!' exclaimed a wounded volunteer to +two comrades, as they paused the other day before a tobacconist's and +examined with the eyes of connoisseurs the brier or bruyere-wood pipes +in his window, 'Boys! I'd give fifty dollars, if I had it, for four +shillins to buy one of them pipes with!' + + * * * * * + +In a late number of an English magazine, Harriet Martineau gives some +account of her conversations, when in America in 1835, with +Chief-Justice Marshall and Mr. Madison. These men then represented the +old ideas of the Republic and of Virginia as it had been. The following +extract fully declares their opinions: + + 'When I knew Chief-Justice Marshall he was eighty-three--as + bright-eyed and warm-hearted as ever, while as dignified a judge as + ever filled the highest seat in the highest court of any country. + He said he had seen Virginia the leading State for half his life; + he had seen her become the second, and sink to be (I think) the + fifth. + + 'Worse than this, there was no arresting her decline if her + citizens did not put an end to slavery; and he saw no signs of any + intention to do so, east of the mountains, at least. He had seen + whole groups of estates, populous in his time, lapse into waste. He + had seen agriculture exchanged for human stock-breeding; and he + keenly felt the degradation. + + 'The forest was returning over the fine old estates, and the wild + creatures which had not been seen for generations were reaeppearing, + numbers and wealth were declining, and education and manners were + degenerating. It would not have surprised him to be told that on + that soil would the main battles be fought when the critical day + should come which he foresaw. + + 'To Mr. Madison despair was not easy. He had a cheerful and + sanguine temper, and if there was one thing rather than another + which he had learned to consider secure, it was the Constitution + which he had so large a share in making. Yet he told me that he was + nearly in despair, and that he had been quite so till the + Colonization Society arose. + + 'Rather than admit to himself that the South must be laid waste by + a servile war, or the whole country by a civil war, he strove to + believe that millions of negroes could be carried to Africa, and so + got rid of. I need not speak of the weakness of such a hope. What + concerns us now is that he saw and described to me, when I was his + guest, the dangers and horrors of the state of society in which he + was living. + + 'He talked more of slavery than of all other subjects together, + returning to it morning, noon, and night. He said that the clergy + perverted the Bible because it was altogether against slavery; that + the colored population was increasing faster than the white; and + that the state of morals was such as barely permitted society to + exist. + + 'Of the issue of the conflict, whenever it should occur, there + could, he said, be no doubt. A society burdened with a slave system + could make no permanent resistance to an unencumbered enemy; and he + was astonished at the fanaticism which blinded some Southern men to + so clear a certainty. + + 'Such was Mr. Madison's opinion in 1855.' + +But the trial has come at last, and it is for the country to decide +whether the South is to be allowed to secede, or to remain strengthened +by their slaves, planting and warring against us until our own resources +becoming exhausted, Europe can at an opportune moment intervene. But +will that be the end? Will not Russia revenge the Crimea by aiding +us--will not Austria be dismembered, France on fire, Southern Europe in +arms, and one storm of anarchy sweep over the world? It is all possible, +should we persevere in fighting the enemy with one hand and feeding him +with the other. + + * * * * * + +There is such a thing as silly theatrical sentiment, and much of it is +shown in the vulgar, melodramatic acting out of popular songs, as shown +by the subjoined brace of anecdotes: + + DEAR SIR: I have had, in my time, not a little experience + of jailer, warden, and, of late, camp life, and would like to say a + word about silly, misplaced sympathy, of which I have witnessed + enough in all conscience. + + At one time, while officering it in a prison not one thousand + miles--as the penny papers say--from the State of New-York, we + received into our hands about as degraded a specimen of the _genus_ + 'murderer,' as it was ever my lot to see. He had killed a woman in + a most cowardly and cruel manner, and was, to my way of thinking, + (and I was used to such fellows,) about as brutal-looking a human + beast as one need look at. However, we had hardly got him into a + cell, before a carriage drove up to the door, and a + splendidly-dressed lady, with a basket of oranges and a five-dollar + camellia bouquet, asked to see the prisoner. + + '_Do_ let me see him!' she cried, 'I read of him in the newspaper, + and, guilty as he is, I would fain contribute my mite to soothe + him.' + + 'He is a rough customer, marm,' said my assistant. + + 'Yes, but you know what the poet says: + + "Bring flowers to the captive's lonely cell." + + So she went in. She took but small notice of the prisoner, however, + arranged her bouquet, left her oranges, and departed. It occurred + to me to promptly search the bouquet for a concealed note or file, + so I entered the cell as she went out. I found Shocky, as we called + him, sucking away at an orange, and staring at the flowers in great + amazement. Finally, he spoke. + + 'Wat in ----'s the use a sendin' them things to a feller fur, + unless they give him the rum with 'em?' + + 'What do you suppose they are meant for?' I replied. + + 'Why, to make bitters with, in course. An't them come-a-mile + flowers?' + + The second is something of the same sort. Not long since, a lot of + us--I am an H. P., 'high private,' now--were quartered in several + wooden tenements, and in the inner room of one lay the _corpus_ of + a young Secesh officer, awaiting burial. The news soon spread to a + village not far off. Down came tearing a sentimental and not + bad-looking specimen of a Virginny dame. + + 'Let me kiss him for his mother!' she cried, as I interrupted her + progress. '_Do_ let me kiss him for his mother!' + + 'Kiss whom?' + + 'The dear little lieutenant, the one who lies dead within. P'int + him out to me, sir, if you please. I never saw him, but--oh!' + + I led her through a room in which Lieutenant ----, of Philadelphia, + lay stretched out on an up-turned trough, fast asleep. Supposing + him to be the 'article' sought for, she rushed up, and exclaiming, + 'Let me kiss him for his mother,' approached her lips to his + forehead. What was her amazement when the 'corpse,' ardently + clasping its arms around her, returned the salute vigorously, and + exclaimed: + + 'Never mind the old lady, Miss, go it on your own account. I + haven't the slightest objection!' + + Sentiment is a fine thing, Mr. Editor, but it should be handled as + one handles the spiked guns which the rebels leave behind, loaded + with percussion-caps--very carefully. + + Yours amazingly, + + WARDEN. + + * * * * * + +Readers who are desirous of seeing Ravenshoe fully played out will +please glance at the following: + + +RAVENSHOE--ITS SEQUEL. + +PREFACE + +There are those who assert that the doctrine of Compensation is utterly +ignored in Ravenshoe. They instance the rewarding Welter, a coarse, +brutal scoundrel and sensual beast, with wealth and title, and such +honor as the author can confer, as an insult to every rational reader; +nor can they think Charles Ravenshoe, or Horton, who endeavored right +manfully to support himself, repaid for this exertion, and for bearing +up stoutly against his troubles, by being compelled 'to pass a dull, +settled, dreaming, melancholy old age' as an invalid. + +It may naturally be thought that a residence of years in Australia, the +mother of Botany Bay, where not exactly the best of American society +could be found, has had its effect in embittering even an Englishman +against Americans, and of embroiling him with his own countrymen; +therefore the reader must smile at this principle of rewarding vice and +punishing virtue; it is what Ravenshoe pretends to be--something novel. + +The extreme dissatisfaction of the public with this volume calls +imperatively for a satisfactory conclusion to it, consequently a sequel +is now presented in what the Australians call the most 'bloody dingo[6] +politeful' manner. + + +CHAPTER I. + +A small boy with a dirty face met another small boy similarly +caparisoned. Said the first: 'Eech! you don' know how much twicet two +is?' + +'You are a ----' (we suppress the word he used; suffice it to say, it +may be defined, 'a kind of harp much used by the ancients!')--'twicet +two is four. Hmm!' replied the second. + +The reader may not see it, but the writer does, that this trivial +conversation has important bearing on the fate of William Ravenshoe, the +wrongful-rightful, rightful-wrongful, etcetera, heir. For further +particulars, see the Bohemian Girl, where a babe is changed by a nurse +in order that the nurse may have change for it. + +When Charles Horton Ravenshoe returned once more to his paternal acres, +it will be remembered he settled two thousand pounds a year, rent-charge +on Ravenshoe, in favor of William Ravenshoe. Over and above this, +Charles enjoyed from this estate and from what Lord Saltire (Satire?) +willed him, no less than fourteen thousand pounds; his settlement on +William was therefore by no means one half of the income, consequently +unfair to the exiled Catholic half-brother. + +After the death of Father Mackworth he was followed by a gentleman in +crow-colored raiment, named Father Macksham, who accompanied William, +the ex-heir, to a small cottage, where the plots inside were much larger +than the grass-plots outside, and where Father Macksham hatched the +following fruit, which only partially ripened. He determined to +overthrow Welter by the means of Adelaide, then overthrow Adelaide by +means of Charles Ravenshoe, then overthrow the latter by his +illegitimate brother, and finally throw the last over in favor of the +Jesuits. He occupied all his spare moments preparing the fireworks. + + +CHAPTER II. + +The reader will remember that Adelaide, wife of Welter, or Lord Ascot, +broke her back while attempting to jump a fence, mounted on the back of +the Irish mare 'Molly Asthore,' but the reader does not know that Welter +was the cause of his wife's fall, and that he actually hired a groom to +scare 'Molly Asthore' so that she would take the fence, and also his +wife out of this vale of tears. (This sentence I know is not +grammatical; who cares?) Welter, when he saw that his wife was not +killed, was furious. His large red brutal face turned to purple; he +smote his prize-fighting chest with his huge fists, he lowered his +eyebrows until he resembled an infuriated hog, and then he retired to +his house and drank a small box of claret--pints--twenty-four to the +dozen! + +Adelaide, too, was furious, but she sent privately to London for Surgeon +Forsups--he came; then in the night season, unbeknown to Welter, an +operation was performed, and behold! in the morning light lay Adelaide, +tall, straight, commanding, proud--well as ever! in fact, straight as a +shingle. Do you think she wanted to choke Welter? I do. + + +CHAPTER III. + +Nature was in one of her gloomiest moods, the clouds were the color of +burnt treacle, the sombre rain pelted the dismal streets; mud was +everywhere, desolation, misery, wet boots, and ruined hats. In the midst +of such a scene, Welter, Lord Ascot, died of apoplexy in the throat, +caused by a rope. Who did the deed? Owls on the battlements answer me. +Did he do it himself or was it done for him? Shrieking elements respond. +Echo answers: Justice! + + +CHAPTER IV. + +Ravenshoe bay again. Sunlight on the waters; clear blue sky; all nature +smiling serenely; Charles Ravenshoe--I adore the man when I think of +him--landing a forty-four-pound salmon; ruddy with health, joyous in +countenance; two curly-headed boys screaming for joy; his wife, 'she +that was' (Americanism picked up among Yorkshiremen in Australia) Mary +Corby, laughing heartily at the _tout ensemble_. William Ravenshoe +affectionately helping Charles with a landing-net to secure the salmon, +thus speaks to him: + +'Charles, this idea of yours of dividing the 'state evenly between us is +noble, but I shall not accept it. I would like a small piece of the tail +of this salmon for dinner, though, if it will not rob you.' + +'William, halves in every thing between us is my motto; so say no more +about it. The delightful news that Father Macksham has at last fallen a +victim to his love of gain, while trying to run a cargo of cannons, +powder, and Enfield rifles to the confederate States, IN DIRECT +OPPOSITION TO HER BLESSED MAJESTY'S COMMANDS, rejoices my heart to that +extent that I exclaim, perish all Jesuits! Now that you have turned +Protestant, and are thoroughly out of the woods of medieval romance, I +may say, + + 'The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold,' + +and quote Tennyson, like poor Cuthbert, all day long. Who is there to +hinder?' + +'No one,' replied William, with all the warmth of heart of a man who was +once a groom and then a bridegroom. 'No one. I saw Adelaide this morning +a-carrying flannels and rum to the poor of the parish; how thoroughly +she has reformed, I'm sure.' + + * * * * * + +Reader, let us pause here and dwell on the respective merits of the +Bohemian Girl, and Father Rodin in the _Mysteries of Paris_, compared +with the characters described in _Ravenshoe_. Let us ask if an English +novel can be written without allusion to the Derby or Life at Oxford, +the accumulation of pounds or the squandering of pounds, rightful heirs +or wrongful heirs, false marriages, or the actions of spoiled children +generally? An answer is looked for. + + * * * * * + +'And further this deponent sayeth not.' + + * * * * * + +The Nashville _Union_--the new Union newspaper of that city--is +emphatically 'an institution,' and a dashing one at that. Its every +column is like the charge of a column of infantry into the unhallowed +Rebel-ry of Disunion. 'Don't compromise your loyalty with rebels,' says +the _Union_, 'until you are ready to compromise your soul with the +devil.' + +Some of the humor of this brave pioneer sheet is decidedly piquant. +Among its quizzical literary efforts the review of Rev. Dr. McFerrin's +_Confederate Primer_ is good enough to form the initial of a series. We +make the following extracts: + + 'Nothing is more worthy of being perpetuated than valuable + contributions to literature. The literature of a nation is its + crown of glory, whose reflected light shines far down the + swift-rolling waves of time and gladdens the eyes of remote + generations. This beautiful and--to our notion--finely-expressed + sentiment was suggested to our mind in turning over the pages of + Rev. Dr. McFerrin's _Confederate Primer_, which we briefly noticed + yesterday. We feel that we then passed too hastily over a work so + grand in its conception.... The _Primer_, after giving the alphabet + in due form, offers some little rhymes for youngsters, which are + perfect nosegays of sentiment, of which the following will serve + as samples: + + N. + + At Nashville's fall + We sinned all. + + T. + + At Number Ten + We sinned again. + + F. + + Thy purse to mend, + Old Floyd, attend. + + L. + + Abe Lincoln bold, + Our ports doth hold. + + D. + + Jeff Davis tells a lie, + And so must you and I. + + I. + + Isham doth mourn + His case forlorn. + + P. + + Brave Pillow's flight + Is out of sight. + + B. + + Buell doth play, + And after slay. + + O. + + Yon Oak will be the gallows-tree + Of Richmond's fallen majesty. + + + +Governor Ishain Harris 'catches it' in the following extract from the +Easy Reading Lessons for Children: + + +'LESSON FIRST. + +'THE SMART DIX-IE BOY. + + 'Once there was a lit-tle boy, on-ly four years old. His name was + Dix-ie. His fa-ther's name was I-sham, and his moth-er's name was + All-sham. Dix-ie was ver-y smart, He could drink whis-ky, fight + chick-ens, play po-ker, and cuss his moth-er. When he was on-ly two + years old, he could steal su-gar, hook pre-serves, drown kit-tens, + and tell lies like a man. By and by Dix-ie died, and went to the + bad place. But the dev-il would not let Dix-ie stay there, for he + said: 'When you get big, Dix-ie, you would be head-devil yourself.' + All little Reb-els ought to be like Dix-ie, and so they will, if + they will stud-y the _Con-fed-e-rate Prim-er_.' + +Very good, too, is the powerful and thrilling sermon on the 'Curse of +Cowardice,' delivered by the Rev. Dr. Meroz Armageddon Baldwin, from +which we take 'the annexed:' + + 'Then there is Gideon Pillow, who has undertaken a contract for + digging that 'last ditch,' of which you have heard so much. I am + afraid that the white 'feathers will fly' whenever _that_ Case is + opened, and that Pillow will give us the slip. 'The sword of the + Lord' isn't 'the sword of Gideon' Pillow--_that's_ certain--so I + shall bolster him up no longer. Gideon is 'a cuss,' and a 'cuss of + cowardice.'' + +We are glad to see that the good cause has so stalwart and keen a +defender in Tennessee. + + * * * * * + +We have our opinion that the following anecdote is true. If not, it is +'well found'--or founded. + +Not long since, an eminent 'Conserve' of Boston was arguing with a +certain eminent official in Washington, drilling away, of course, on the +old pro-slavery, pro-Southern, pro-give-it-up platform. + +'But what _can_ you do with the Southerners?' he remarked, for 'the +frequenth' time. 'You can't conquer them--you can't reconcile them--you +can't bring them back--you can't do any thing with them.' + +'But we may _annihilate_ them,' was the crushing reply. + +And CONSERVE took his hat and departed. + +It is, when we come to facts, really remarkable that it has not occurred +to the world that there _can_ be but one solution to a dispute which has +gone so far. _There is no stopping this war._ Secession is an +impossibility. If we _willed_ it, we could not prevent 'an institutional +race' from absorbing one which has no accretive principle of growth. It +is thought, as we write, that during the week preceding July 4th, +_seventy thousand_ of the Secession army perished! They are exhausting, +annihilating themselves; and by whom will the vacancy be filled? Not by +the children of States which, under the old system, fell behindhand in +population. By whom, then? By Northern men and European emigrants, of +course. + +But European intervention? If Louis Napoleon wants to keep his crown--if +England wishes Europe to remain quiet--if they both dread our good +friend Russia, who in event of a war would 'annex,' for aught we can +see, all Austria and an illimitable share of the East--if they wish to +avoid such an upstirring, riot, and infernal carnival of revolution as +the world never saw--they will let us alone. + +The London _Herald_ declares that 'America is a nuisance among nations!' +When they undertake to meddle with us, they will find us one. We would +not leave them a ship on the sea or a seaboard town un-ruined. The whole +world would wail one wild ruin, and there should be the smoke as of +nations, when despotism should dare to lay its hand on the sacred cause +of freedom. For we of the North are living and dying in that cause which +never yet went backward, and we shall prevail, though the powers of all +Europe and all the powers of darkness should ally against us. Let them +come. They do but bring grapes to the wine-press of the Lord; and it +will be a bloody vintage which will be pressed forth in that day, as the +great cause goes marching on. + + * * * * * + +Let no one imagine that our military draft has been one whit too great. +Our great folly hitherto has been to underrate the power of the enemy. +In the South every male who can bear arms is now either bearing them or +otherwise directly aiding the rebellion. When the sheriffs of every +county in the seceding States made their returns to their Secretary of +War, they reported one million four hundred thousand men capable of +bearing arms. And they have the arms and will use them. It is 'an united +rising of the people,' such as the world has seldom seen. + +But then it is _all_ they can do--it is the last card and the _last_ +man, and if we make one stupendous effort, we must inevitably crush it. +There is no other course--it is drag or be dragged, hammer or anvil now. +If we do not beat _them_ thoroughly and completely, they will make us +rue the day that ever we were born. + +The South is stronger than we thought, and its unity and ferocity add to +its strength. It will never be conciliated--it must be crushed. When we +have gained the victory, we can be what our foes never were to +us--generous and merciful. + + * * * * * + +A GENTLEMAN of Massachusetts, who has held a position in McClellan's +army that gave him an opportunity to know whereof he speaks, states that +for weeks, while the army on the Peninsula were in a grain-growing +country, surrounded by fields of wheat and oats belonging to well-known +rebels, the Commissary Department was not allowed to turn its cattle +into a rich pasturage of young grain, from the fear of offending the +absent rebel owners, or of using in any way the property of Our Southern +Brethren in arms against us. The result was, that the cattle kept with +the army for the use of our hard-worked soldiers, were penned up, and +half-starved on the forage carried in the regular subsistence trains, +and the men got mere skin and bones for beef. + + * * * * * + +So endeth the month. The rest with the next. But may we, in conclusion, +beg sundry kind correspondents to have patience? Time is scant with us, +and labor fast and hard. Our editorial friends who have kindly cheered +us by applauding 'the outspoken and straightforward young magazine,' +will accept our most grateful thanks. It has seldom happened to any +journal to be so genially and _warmly_ commended as we have been since +our entrance on the stormy field of political discussion. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 6: The _dingo_, or native dog of Australia, looks like a cross +between the fox or wolf and the shepherd-dog; they generally hunt in +packs, and destroy great numbers of sheep. I have never eaten one.] + + + + +THE + +CONTINENTAL MONTHLY + +THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY has passed its experimental ordeal, and +stands firmly established in popular regard. It was started at a period +when any new literary enterprise was deemed almost foolhardy, but the +publisher believed that the time had arrived for just such a Magazine. +Fearlessly advocating the doctrine of ultimate and gradual Emancipation, +for the sake of the UNION and the WHITE MAN, it has +found favor in quarters where censure was expected, and patronage where +opposition only was looked for. While holding firmly to its _own +opinions_, it has opened its pages to POLITICAL WRITERS _of +widely different views_, and has made a feature of employing the +literary labors of the _younger_ race of American writers. How much has +been gained by thus giving, practically, the fullest freedom to the +expression of opinion, and by the infusion of fresh blood into +literature, has been felt from month to month in its constantly +increasing circulation. + +The most eminent of our Statesmen have furnished THE +CONTINENTAL many of its political articles, and the result is, it +has not given labored essays fit only for a place in ponderous +encyclopedias, but fresh, vigorous, and practical contributions on men +and things as they exist. + +It will be our effort to go on in the path we have entered, and as a +guarantee of the future, we may point to the array of live and brilliant +talent which has brought so many encomiums on our Magazine. The able +political articles which have given it so much reputation will be +continued in each issue, together with the new Novel by Richard B. +Kimball, the eminent author of the 'Under-Currents of Wall-Street,' 'St. +Leger,' etc., entitled. + + +WAS HE SUCCESSFUL? + +An account of the Life and Conduct of Hiram Meeker, one of the leading +men in the mercantile community, and 'a bright and shining light' in the +Church, recounting what he did, and how he made his money. This work +excels the previous brilliant productions of this author. In the present +number is also commenced a new Serial by the author of 'Among the +Pines,' entitled. + + +A MERCHANT'S STORY, + +which will depict Southern _white_ society, and be a truthful history of +some eminent Northern merchants who are largely in 'the cotton trade and +sugar line.' + +The UNION--The Union of ALL THE STATES--that indicates +our politics. To be content with no ground lower than the highest--that +is the standard of our literary character. + +We hope all who are friendly to the spread of our political views, and +all who are favorable to the diffusion of a live, fresh, and energetic +literature, will lend us their aid to increase our circulation. There is +not one of our readers who may not influence one or two more, and there +is in every town in the loyal States some active person whose time might +be justifiably employed in procuring subscribers to our work. To +encourage such to act for us we offer the following very liberal + + + TERMS TO CLUBS. + + + Two copies for one year, Five dollars. + Three copies for one year, Six dollars. + Six copies for one year, Eleven dollars. + Eleven copies for one year, Twenty dollars. + Twenty copies for one year, Thirty-six dollars. + + PAID IN ADVANCE. + + _Postage, Thirty-six Cents a year_, TO BE PAID BY THE SUBSCRIBER. + + SINGLE COPIES. + + Three Dollars a year, IN ADVANCE.--_Postage paid by the Publisher_. + + J. R. GILMORE, 532 Broadway, New-York, + and 110 Tremont Street, Boston. + + CHARLES T. EVANS, 532 Broadway, New-York, General Agent. + + + [Illustration: pointing finger] Any person sending us Three Dollars, for one year's subscription to "The + Continental," commencing with the July number, will receive the Magazine and + "Among the Pines," cloth edition; both free of postage. + + + + * * * * * + + +[Illustration: THE FINEST FARMING LANDS WHEAT CORN COTTON FRUITS & +VEGETABLES] + +~EQUAL TO ANY IN THE WORLD!!!~ + +MAY BE PROCURED + +~At FROM $8 to $12 PER ACRE,~ + +Near Markets, Schools, Railroads, Churches, and all the blessings of +Civilization. + +1,200,000 Acres, in Farms of 40, 80, 120, 160 Acres and upwards, in +ILLINOIS, the Garden State of America. + + * * * * * + +The Illinois Central Railroad Company offer, ON LONG CREDIT, the +beautiful and fertile PRAIRIE LANDS lying along the whole line of their +Railroad. 700 MILES IN LENGTH, upon the most Favorable Terms for +enabling Farmers, Manufacturers, Mechanics and Workingmen to make for +themselves and their families a competency, and a HOME they can call +THEIR OWN, as will appear from the following statements: + +ILLINOIS. + +Is about equal in extent to England, with a population of 1,722,666, and +a soil capable of supporting 20,000,000. No State in the Valley of the +Mississippi offers so great an inducement to the settler as the State of +Illinois. There is no part of the world where all the conditions of +climate and soil so admirably combine to produce those two great +staples, CORN and WHEAT. + +CLIMATE. + +Nowhere can the Industrious farmer secure such immediate results from +his labor as on these deep, rich, loamy soils, cultivated with so much +ease. The climate from the extreme southern part of the State to the +Terre Haute, Alton and St. Louis Railroad, a distance of nearly 200 +miles, is well adapted to Winter. + +WHEAT, CORN, COTTON, TOBACCO. + +Peaches, Pears, Tomatoes, and every variety of fruit and vegetables is +grown in great abundance, from which Chicago and other Northern markets +are furnished from four to six weeks earlier than their immediate +vicinity. Between the Terre Haute, Alton & St. Louis Railway and the +Kankakee and Illinois Rivers, (a distance of 115 miles on the Branch, +and 136 miles on the Main Trunk,) lies the great Corn and Stock raising +portion of the State. + +THE ORDINARY YIELD + +of Corn is from 60 to 80 bushels per acre. Cattle, Horses, Mules, Sheep +and Hogs are raised here at a small cost, and yield large profits. It is +believed that no section of country presents greater inducements for +Dairy Farming than the Prairies of Illinois, a branch of farming to +which but little attention has been paid, and which must yield sure +profitable results. Between the Kankakee and Illinois Rivers, and +Chicago and Dunleith, (a distance of 56 miles on the Branch and 147 +miles by the Main Trunk,) Timothy Hay, Spring Wheat, Corn, &c., are +produced in great abundance. + +AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS. + +The Agricultural products of Illinois are greater than those of any +other State. The Wheat crop of 1861 was estimated at 35,000,000 bushels, +while the Corn crop yields not less than 140,000,000 bushels besides the +crop of Oats, Barley, Rye, Buckwheat, Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, +Pumpkins, Squashes, Flax, Hemp, Peas, Clover, Cabbage, Beets, Tobacco, +Sorgheim, Grapes, Peaches, Apples, &c., which go to swell the vast +aggregate of production in this fertile region. Over Four Million tons +of produce were sent out the State of Illinois during the past year. + +STOCK RAISING. + +In Central and Southern Illinois uncommon advantages are presented for +the extension of Stock raising. All kinds of Cattle, Horses, Mules, +Sheep, Hogs, &c., of the best breeds, yield handsome profits; large +fortunes have already been made, and the field is open for others to +enter with the fairest prospects of like results. Dairy Farming also +presents its inducements to many. + +CULTIVATION OF COTTON. + +The experiments in Cotton culture are of very great promise. Commencing +in latitude 39 deg. 30 min. (see Mattoon on the Branch, and Assumption +on the Main Line), the Company owns thousands of acres well adapted to +the perfection of this fibre. A settler having a family of young +children, can turn their youthful labor to a most profitable account in +the growth and perfection of this plant. + +THE ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD + +Traverses the whole length of the State, from the banks of the +Mississippi and Lake Michigan to the Ohio. As its name imports, the +Railroad runs through the centre of the State, and on either side of the +road along its whole length lie the lands offered for sale. + +CITIES, TOWNS, MARKETS, DEPOTS. + +There are Ninety-eight Depots on the Company's Railway, giving about one +every seven miles. Cities, Towns and Villages are situated at convenient +distances throughout the whole route, where every desirable commodity +may be found as readily as in the oldest cities of the Union, and where +buyers are to be met for all kinds of farm produce. + +EDUCATION. + +Mechanics and working-men will find the free school system encouraged by +the State, and endowed with a large revenue for the support of the +schools. Children can live in sight of the school, the college, the +church, and grow up with the prosperity of the leading State in the +Great Western Empire. + + * * * * * + +PRICES AND TERMS OF PAYMENT--ON LONG CREDIT. + + 80 acres at $10 per acre, with interest at 6 per ct. annually + on the following terms: + + Cash payment $48 00 + + Payment in one year 48 00 + " in two years 48 00 + " in three years 48 00 + " in four years 236 00 + " in five years 224 00 + " in six years 212 00 + + + 40 acres, at $10 00 per acre: + + Cash payment $24 00 + + Payment in one year 24 00 + " in two years 24 00 + " in three years 24 00 + " in four years 118 00 + " in five years 112 00 + " in six years 106 00 + + + * * * * * + + +Number 10 25 Cents. + +The + +Continental + +Monthly + + +Devoted To Literature and National Policy. + + + +OCTOBER, 1862. + + + +NEW-YORK AND BOSTON: +J. R. GILMORE, 532 BROADWAY, NEW-YORK, +AND 110 TREMONT STREET, BOSTON. +NEW-YORK: HENRY DEXTER AND SINCLAIR TOUSEY. +PHILADELPHIA: T. B. CALLENDER AND A. WINCH. + + + + +CONTENTS.--No. X. + + The Constitution as it Is--The Union as it Was! C. S. Henry, LL.D., 377 + Maccaroni and Canvas. Henry P. Leland, 383 + Sir John Suckling, 397 + London Fogs and London Poor, 404 + A Military Nation. Charles G. Leland, 413 + Tom Winter's Story. Geo. W. Chapman, 416 + The White Hills in October. Miss C. M. Sedgwick, 423 + Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-Two, U. S. Johnson, 442 + Flower-Arranging, 444 + Southern Hate of the North. Horace Greeley, 448 + A Merchant's Story. Edmund Kirke, 451 + The Union. Hon. Robert J. Walker, 457 + Our Wounded. C. K. Tuckerman, 465 + A Southern Review. Charles G. Leland, 466 + Was He Successful? Richard B. Kimball, 470 + Literary Notices, 478 + Editor's Table, 481 + + +ANNOUNCEMENT. + +The Proprietors of THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY, warranted by its +great success, have resolved to increase its influence and usefulness by +the following changes: + +The Magazine has become the property of an association of men of +character and large means. Devoted to the NATIONAL CAUSE, it +will ardently and unconditionally support the UNION. Its scope +will be enlarged by articles relating to our public defenses, Army and +Navy, gunboats, railroads, canals, finance, and currency. The cause of +gradual emancipation and colonization will be cordially sustained. The +literary character of the Magazine will be improved, and nothing which +talent, money, and industry combined can achieve, will be omitted. + +The political department will be controlled by Hon. ROBERT J. +WALKER and Hon. FREDERIC P. STANTON, of Washington, D.C. +Mr. WALKER, after serving nine years as Senator, and four years +as Secretary of the Treasury, was succeeded in the Senate by +JEFFERSON DAVIS. Mr. STANTON served ten years in +Congress, acting as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee and of Naval +Affairs. Mr. WALKER was succeeded as Governor of Kansas by Mr. +STANTON, and both were displaced by Mr. BUCHANAN, for +refusing to force slavery upon that people by fraud and forgery. The +literary department of the Magazine will be under the control of +CHARLES GODFREY LELAND of Boston, and EDMUND KIRKE of +New-York. Mr. LELAND is the present accomplished Editor of the +Magazine. Mr. KIRKE is one of its constant contributors, but +better known as the author of 'Among the Pines' the great picture true +to life, of Slavery as it is. + +THE CONTINENTAL, while retaining all the old corps of writers, +who have given it so wide a circulation, will be reinforced by new +contributors, greatly distinguished as statesmen, scholars, and savans. + + +Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by JAMES R. +GILMORE, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United +States for the Southern District of New-York. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, + September, 1862, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY *** + +***** This file should be named 20647.txt or 20647.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/6/4/20647/ + +Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Janet Blenkinship and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net +(This file was produced from images generously made +available by Cornell University Digital Collections) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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